Practical  Hints 

on 
Training  for  the  Stage 


Uniform  with  this  Volume 


Practical   Stage   Directing  for 

Amateurs 

A  Handbook  for  Amateur.Managers 
and  Actors 

By 

Emerson  Taylor 


E.  P.  Dutton  &  Company 


Practical  Hints  on  Training 
for  the  Stage 


By 
v  Agnes  Platt 

Author  of  "Practical  Hints  on  Playwritlng,"  etc. 


New  York 

E.  P.  Button  &  Company 
681  Fifth  Avenue 


COPYRIGHT,  1921, 
BY  E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 

Ail  Rights  Reserved 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


FOREWORD 

THIS  little  book  is  merely  an  attempt  to  set 
down  certain  points  of  view  which  I  have 
found  helpful  myself  when  coaching  my  stage 
pupils,  whether  novices  or  actors  of  some  ex- 
perience, who  come  for  help  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  special  roles. 

I  have  always  found  that  the  greater  the 
actor,  the  more  eager  he  is  to  have  his  work 
pulled  to  pieces.  A  critic  may  be  at  fault, 
but  he  does  not  take  the  trouble  to  criticize  in 
detail  unless  he  feels  that  the  actor  is  going 
to  be  worth  while,  and  that  he  has  sufficient 
power  within  him  to  attain  success  in  the 
end.  It  is  for  the  actor  himself  to  weigh  the 
criticisms  he  receives,  and  to  try  to  compare 
the  effect  his  work  has  made  on  others  with 
the  aim  he  had  in  mind. 

If  this  book  serves  the  purpose  of  awaken- 
ing in  the  minds  of  my  readers  a  desire  for 


vi  Foreword 

criticism  and  an  instinct  of  self-judgment,  I 
shall  feel  I  have  accomplished  all  that  I  set 
out  to  achieve. 

AGNES  PLATT 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    THE  WORK  OF  AN   ACTOR.    WHAT  HE  WILL 

HAVE    TO    FACE,    AND    WHAT    HE    MAY    ACHIEVE  I 

II    How  TO  APPLY  THE  INCIDENTS  OF  DAILY  LIFE 

TO  ONE'S  WORK 13 

III  THE  VOICE  AND  ITS  POTENTIALITIES    ....  22 

IV  THE  Music  OF  THE  VOICE:    ITS  NOTES,  POWER 

OF  SUGGESTION  AND  MAGNETISM     ....  41 

V    MOVEMENT  AND  FACIAL  EXPRESSION  ....  55 

VI    CHARACTER  IN  MOVEMENT 66 

VII    WORDS  AND  THEIR  SPOKEN  VALUE    ....  79 

VIII    AUDIENCES 92 

IX    How  TO  "FEED"  AND  How  TO  BUILD  UP    .     .  102 

X    METHODS  OF  CERTAIN  FAMOUS  ACTORS    .     .     .  115 

XI    How  TO  SET  ABOUT  THE  WORK  OF  GETTING  AN 

ENGAGEMENT 141 

XII    AND  How  TO  BEHAVE  WHEN  IT  is  GOT    .     .  160 


Practical  Hints 

on 
Training  for  the  Stage 


PRACTICAL  HINTS  ON  TRAINING 
FOR  THE  STAGE 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  WORK  OF  AN  ACTOR.      WHAT  HE  WILL 

HAVE  TO   FACE  AND   WHAT   HE  MAY 

ACHIEVE 

THERE  will  always  be  a  great  deal  of  dis- 
cussion as  to  whether  acting  is  really  an  art. 
To  my  mind  no  one  who  has  seen  the  work 
of  a  great  actor  can  hesitate  for  a  moment  to 
answer  this  question  in  the  affirmative.  Act- 
ing is  undoubtedly  an  art,  and  one  which 
needs  so  many  qualities  to  achieve  a  full  re- 
sult that  the  wonder  is,  not  that  there  are 
so  few  great  actors,  but  rather  that  there 
should  be  so  many.  Like  every  other  art, 
it  is  possible  to  attain  a  certain  degree  of  ex- 
cellence without  having  genius,  if  one  has  ob- 
servation, application  and  taste.  I  think  it 
is  because  of  this  that  people  are  apt  to  say 
1 


2  Training  for  the  Stage 

that  acting  is  not  an  art,  and  also  because 
acting  is,  in  most  cases,  more  interpretative 
than  creative.  But  then,  in  the  true  sense 
of  the  world,  all  art  is  interpretative.  The 
painter  paints  from  life,  the  author  writes 
the  lessons  he  has  learnt  from  life.  Even 
the  greatest  work  of  the  musician  is  his  at- 
tempt to  speak  in  music  the  message  life  has 
sent  him. 

What  is  creation,  and  how  does  it  differ 
from  interpretation  ?  Both  author  and  actor 
interpret  from  the  book  of  Nature  according 
to  their  lights.  We  may  fancy  that  we  have 
original  ideas,  and  that  our  work  expresses 
them,  and  it  is  certainly  true  that  some  of  us 
have  infinitely  more  independence  of  outlook 
than  others;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  be- 
cause we  are  interpreting  we  are  necessarily 
laying  aside  our  originality.  On  the  con- 
trary one  needs  great  originality  to  interpret 
with  illumination ;  for  if  one  lacks  originality 
oneself,  one  will  never  be  able  to  appreciate 
the  originality  of  others.  An  actor  of  com- 
monplace mind  can  only  give  a  commonplace 
interpretation;  but  an  actor  of  original  mind 
will  cast  the  light  of  his  own  genius  over  the 


The  Work  of  an  Actor  3 

work  of  his  author,  and  by  understanding  to 
the  full  the  meaning  of  that  author,  and  the 
possibilities  of  his  part,  will  make  of  the  char- 
acter he  plays  an  outstanding  bit  of  life,  true 
in  itself,  and  true  also  in  its  relation  to  the 
whole  play.  When  reading  an  author's  work 
with  a  view  to  acting,  one  has  got  to  see,  not 
only  what  the  author  has  actually  written, 
but  all  that  he  wanted  to  convey  and  all  that 
he  might  have  conveyed,  had  his  genius  been 
of  the  first  water.  It  is  here  that  an  actor 
whose  genius  is  of  the  first  water  supplies  a 
fuller  and  more  satisfying  interpretation,  and 
thereby  raises  his  calling  to  the  level  of  a 
high  art. 

There  is  a  constant  feud  between  actors 
and  authors,  due  sometimes  to  a  kind  of 
jealousy.  An  actor  who  approaches  his  work 
with  a  grudge  in  his  heart  that  the  author 
may  get  the  credit  of  his  brains  is  a  man 
who  is  not  fitted  for  his  profession.  Per- 
haps in  no  art  is  there  so  much  risk  of  being 
blamed  for  other  people's  faults  as  in  the  art 
of  acting.  The  critics  themselves  do  not 
always  know  how  to  apportion  praise  and 
blame,  and  will  slate  an  author  for  a  fault 


4  Training  for  the  Stage 

which  is  due  to  the  producer  or  to  the  in- 
equality of  the  cast  For  this  reason  many 
dramatic  criticisms,  even  though  true  of  the 
ensemble,  are  unjust  in  detail.  Unless  you 
have  read  the  original  text  of  a  play  it  is 
almost  impossible,  on  viewing  the  production 
of  that  play,  to  say  where  the  work  of  the 
author  ends  and  the  work  of  the  producer 
and  the  individual  actors  begins.  The  fact 
is  that  author  and  actor  are  cooperating — 
or  should  be  cooperating  loyally — to  pro- 
duce a  common  effect.  United  they  stand, 
divided  they  fall. 

Even  in  so  small  a  matter  as  that  of  for- 
getting one's  lines  upon  the  stage  the  injustice 
of  stage  conditions  makes  itself  felt.  It  is 
not  the  actor  who  "dries  up"  who  seems  in 
fault,  but  his  companion  on  the  stage  who, 
because  he  has  not  received  his  cue,  is  un- 
able to  continue  the  dialogue. 

The  whole  art  of  acting  is  the  art  of  give 
and  take.  You  have  to  view  your  part  in 
relation  to  the  whole,  and  it  is  a  duty  to  re- 
frain from  making  any  special  effect  which  is 
going  to  distract  the  attention  of  the  audi- 
ence from  other  actors  and  concentrate  it 


The  Work  of  an  Actor  5 

upon  yourself.  No  actor  may  look  at  his 
part  from  a  selfish  point  of  view.  He  must 
always  be  willing  to  give  up  his  own  tit-bit 
if  the  well-being  of  the  whole  performance 
demand  it. 

Moreover,  from  first  to  last,  his  own  per- 
sonal feelings  must  be  rigorously  set  aside. 
Whatever  his  private  troubles  or  joys,  he 
must  oust  them  from  his  mind  completely 
while  doing  his  work.  For  the  time  being 
he  has  to  become  an  entirely  different  man. 
He  must  learn  to  wait,  he  must  learn  to  adapt 
himself,  he  must  learn  to  take  sharp  criti- 
cism straight  from  the  shoulder  in  front  of 
his  fellow  actors.  He  must  learn  to  look  on 
his  face  and  other  attributes  merely  as  as- 
sets to  his  work,  and  must  get  rid,  once  and 
for  all,  of  all  personal  vanity.  He  must  learn 
that  his  own  triumph  will  never  be  really 
great  unless  it  is  shared  by  the  other  mem- 
bers of  the  cast  and  above  all  by  the  author. 

For  many  centuries  the  stage  has  been 
looked  upon  as  a  sink  of  iniquity.  Viewed 
rightly,  acting  is  essentially  a  profession 
which  brings  out  the  best  that  is  in  us.  An 
actor  depends  for  his  success  on  a  keenly  de- 


6  Training  for  the  Stage 

veloped  observation  and  sympathetic  under- 
standing of  human  character.  He  will  never 
succeed  with  audiences  unless  he  has  the  fac- 
ulty of  making  himself  liked,  which  means 
that  he  must  rid  himself  of  all  such  annoy- 
ing traits  as  conceit,  self-consciousness,  ob- 
stinacy, aggressiveness,  irritability  and 
"swank";  for  all  these  qualities  leave  their 
mark  on  a  man  and  show  in  his  face  and 
manner.  One  will  never  please  an  audience 
unless  one  has  a  great  desire  to  please,  and 
this  desire  is  not  found  in  company  with  smug 
self-satisfaction. 

Suggestion  plays  a  great  part  on  the  stage, 
and  unless  an  actor  is  himself  sincere  he  will 
never  suggest  sincerity  in  his  work.  Only 
earnestness  is  convincing.  Unless  he  is  un- 
selfish he  will  spoil  the  effect  of  many  a  scene 
because  he  will  grudge  to  his  fellow  actors  in 
that  scene  their  predominance  at  certain  vital 
moments.  Unless  he  is  devoted  to  his  work 
he  will  never  stand  the  nervous  strain  it  en- 
tails. Unless  he  carries  the  thought  of  his 
work  very  close  to  his  heart  he  will  go 
through  life  with  his  eyes  shut  and  lose  the 


The  Work  of  an  Actor  7 

advantage  of  all  the  lessons  which  life  alone 
can  teach. 

Since,  more  than  any  other  art,  acting  is 
the  representation  of  life  by  the  living  human 
being,  it  is  obvious  that  a  study  of  life  and 
character  is  essential.  To  the  actor,  above 
all  men,  every  human  trait  should  speak, 
every  vibration  from  his  fellow  beings  tell 
its  own  story.  One  must  keep  oneself  al- 
ways sensitive  to  the  moods,  needs  and  fail- 
ings of  others,  and  develop  that  sympathy 
which  is  the  surest  understanding. 

Above  all,  the  actor  must  learn  to  sustain 
the  magnetic  point  of  view.  The  rapport  be- 
tween actor  and  audience  is  very  subtle  and 
far  too  little  understood.  There  are  two 
ways  of  looking  at  everything,  and  to  put 
a  wrong  view  before  the  audience  is  to  take 
upon  oneself  a  great  responsibility.  An  ac- 
tor's mental  philosophy  is  an  important  in- 
gredient of  his  work.  His  whole  art  will  be 
tinged  by  his  personal  outlook. 

So  much  by  way  of  motto  to  this  little 
book.  Now  let  us  come  down  to  practical 
matters.  What  exactly  is  the  life  of  an  ac- 


8  Training  for  the  Stage 

tor?    What  does  it  demand  from  him,  and 
how  is  he  going  to  make  good? 

Say  that  an  actor  is  engaged  for  a  part. 
What  happens?  He  is  called  to  rehearsal, 
where  the  producer  gives  him  his  instruc- 
tions as  to  the  positions  he  is  to  occupy  on  the 
stage  when  speaking  his  lines.  As  the  re- 
hearsals progress,  he  is  coached,  more  or  less, 
in  the  business  of  his  part  and  the  necessary 
inflections.  The  first  night  comes.  He  does 
his  best.  The  piece  may,  or  may  not,  be  a 
success.  If  it  is,  after  a  little  more  rehears- 
ing for  the  various  "cuts"  which  the  first 
night's  performance  has  probably  shown  to 
be  necessary,  his  work,  for  some  months  to 
come,  will  consist  in  playing  his  part  with 
probably  little  or  no  further  rehearsing. 
Many  people  think  that  this  makes  the  ac- 
tor's life  an  easy  one.  But  you  have  got  to 
remember  that  the  actor's  hours  take  him  on 
duty  when  the  rest  of  the  world  is  enjoying 
itself;  that  he  is  always  subject  to  uncertainty, 
since  every  audience  differs,  and  "points"  that 
go  well  with  one  will  fall  flat  with  another; 
and  that,  therefore,  an  actor  never  really  en- 
joys the  nerve  rest  afforded  by  the  routine 


The  Work  of  an  Actor  9 

which  forms  an  essential  part  of  so  many 
occupations. 

The  whole  work  of  an  actor  entails  a  pe- 
culiar strain  upon  the  nervous  system.  At 
rehearsals  he  is  continually  being  called  up 
and  put  through  the  discipline  of  a  school- 
boy. On  the  first  night  he  is  subject  to  an 
ordeal  which  some  people  could  not  bring 
themselves  to  face  at  all.  And  on  each  sub- 
sequent performance,  though  the  ordeal  is 
considerably  less,  still  it  is  there,  and  makes 
itself  felt  whenever  any  little  trifle  goes 
wrong  upon  the  stage.  Remember,  also,  that 
his  hours  are  not  those  which  make  for 
health.  He  cannot  get  his  meals  at  normal 
times,  and  he  has  to  work  at  night  in  a  way 
that  is  exciting  to  the  brain  and  detrimental 
to  healthy  sleep. 

I  have  merely  spoken  so  far  of  the  stress 
of  the  work  itself,  but  the  greatest  strain  of 
all  consists  in  procuring  that  work.  Actor's 
engagements  are  all  of  a  more  or  less  pre- 
carious nature.  The  run  of  a  piece  may  last 
for  months,  or  it  may  come  to  an  end  after 
a  few  nights,  and  the  whole  anxiety  of  finding 
fresh  work  may  begin  all  over  again.  It  is 


10  Training  for  the  Stage 

this  uncertainty  which  tells  so  heavily  on  the 
nerves,  far  more  than  the  actual  nature  of  the 
work.  The  ups  and  downs  of  an  actor's 
career  demand  a  steady  courage,  a  hopeful 
spirit  and  a  level  brain.  The  one  bright  spot 
is  that,  however  dark  things  may  seem,  there 
is  always  the  hope  that  fortune  will  suddenly 
appear,  laden  with  smiles  and  favors.  The 
temperament  that  can  look  facts  in  the  face 
and  say,  "Well,  any  change,  even  for  the 
worse,  is  still  a  change,  and  as  such,  prefer- 
able to  monotony,"  is  the  temperament  which 
is  suited  to  the  stage.  The  spirit  at  the  back 
of  such  a  temperament  is  the  spirit  strong 
enough  to  hypnotize  an  audience.  Such  a 
man  has,  in  himself,  the  essence  of  magnet- 
ism, the  quality  which  is  always  going  to  win. 

Some  actors  will  tell  you  that  the  stage  is 
overcrowded.  I  think  this  means  that,  in 
common  with  most  other  occupations,  it  is 
besieged  by  a  crowd  of  the  wrong  people.  I 
am  personally  beset  by  girls  who  say  to  me : 

"I  am  no  good  in  an  office,  I  am  no  good 
at  housework,  I  am  no  good  at  anything; 
therefore,  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to  go  on  the 
stage.  Please  find  me  a  part  in  London.  I 


The  Work  of  an  Actor          11 

would  not  mind  if  it  were  a  small  part,  just 
to  begin,  you  know." 

These  people  rouse  my  ire.  I  consider  it 
an  insult  to  approach  the  stage  from  that 
point  of  view.  But  if  you  have  a  real  sense 
of  the  stage,  nothing  on  earth  will  keep  you 
from  it.  Men  and  women  alike  will  throw 
up  comfortable  berths  and  face  any  hardships 
just  for  the  sake  of  the  joy  acting  brings  to 
them.  Who  shall  say  that  they  have  not 
their  reward?  Is  success  or  failure  just  a 
matter  of  pounds,  shillings  and  pence?  If 
the  struggle  is  hard,  it  is  none  the  less  inter- 
esting, and  a  life  of  effort  is  infinitely  better 
than  stagnation. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  life  of  an  actor  has 
many  compensations,  such  as  cheery  comrade- 
ship, the  feeling  that  it  does  not  matter  even 
if  you  are  poor  because  we  have  all  been 
through  it,  and,  whatever  we  may  be,  we  are 
not  snobs.  It  is  our  tradition  that  genius,  to 
be  worth  while,  must  always  go  through  the 
mill.  Then  even  the  fact  that  our  engage- 
ments are  sometimes  short  may  have  its  com- 
pensating advantage.  The  one  great  draw- 
back of  the  profession  nowadays  is  that  you 


12  Training  for  the  Stage 

often  have  to  face  the  deadly  repetition  of 
a  long  run ;  yet,  again,  if  an  actor  suffers  from 
this  in  one  way,  he  gains  in  another.  It  gives 
him  the  chance  to  put  by  money,  so  that  he 
no  longer  dreads  a  period  of  "resting";  and 
if  he  is  really  fond  of  his  work  he  can  get 
plenty  of  opportunities  to  relieve  the  tedium 
of  playing  one  character  night  after  night  by 
offering  to  take  part  in  charity  matinees  or 
any  of  those  trial  performances  which,  rightly 
handled,  should  add  to  his  stage-craft. 
Moreover,  the  cinema  supplies  an  actor  with 
continual  chances  of  fresh  work. 

Except  in  those  rare  cases  where  every- 
thing goes  persistently  against  an  actor  (cases 
which  one  meets  in  every  profession)  an  ac- 
tor's life  has  many  advantages,  and  its  fas- 
cination is  undeniable.  The  great  thing  is 
to  go  into  it  prepared  to  take  what  comes  and 
not  to  be  daunted  by  obstacles.  If  a  thing  is 
worth  doing  it  is  worth  fighting  for.  If  you 
can  take  that  point  of  view  you  are  fitted  for 
the  stage,  because  you  have,  at  the  back  of 
you,  the  strength  of  character  which  will  give 
you  power  over  an  audience.  In  short,  you 
have  the  greatest  of  all  gifts — Personality. 


CHAPTER  II 


HOW   TO   APPLY    THE    INCIDENTS    OF    ONE'S 
DAILY  LIFE  TO  ONE'S  WORK 


A  STORY  is  told  of  Rachel,  the  great 
French  actress,  which  is  very  striking.  One 
day  her  younger  sister  rushed  into  her  room, 
white  with  horror,  and  cried  out : 

"Father's  dead!" 

Rachel  screamed  and  fainted.  When  at 
last  consciousness  returned  to  her,  her  first 
words  were : 

"I  must  remember  that  scream." 

And  in  the  next  big  tragic  part  she  played 
she  brought  down  the  house  when  she 
screamed  and  fainted. 

I  have  told  that  tale  to  many  who  have 
been  shocked  at  what  seemed  to  them  the 
callousness  of  the  great  actress.  They  were 
wrong.  Our  art  is  a  thing  beyond  us  and 
above  us,  which  calls  and  we  obey.  Every- 
thing that  happens  to  us  we  put,  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  into  our  work;  and  that 
13 


14  Training  for  the  Stage 

work  stands  or  falls  according  to  our  power 
of  assimilating  the  real  meaning  even  of  the 
most  humdrum  incidents  of  daily  life.  "He 
that  hath  eyes  to  see,  let  him  see,"  is  a  golden 
maxim  for  the  actor.  Too  often  we  go  about 
with  our  eyes  shut,  observing  nothing.  A 
tree  waves  its  branches  in  the  wind,  and  we 
take  it  as  an  every-day  occurrence,  while  the 
whole  poetry  of  motion  eludes  us  in  those 
softly  moving  leaves.  A  dog  darts  towards 
us  with  loving  cheeriness,  and  we  brush  him 
aside  and  think:  "What  a  nuisance!  He 
has  muddied  my  clothes."  If  we  watched, 
instead,  the  exquisite  movements  of  that  dog, 
the  curving  of  his  body,  the  delicate  placing 
of  his  paws,  if  we  noted  the  glow  of  his  eyes, 
the  stretching  and  relaxing  of  his  lips,  the 
tones  of  his  various  barks  and,  above  all,  the 
way  he  takes  his  breath  when  barking,  we 
should  learn  a  great  deal  about  the  art  of 
acting.  Dogs  are  born  actors,  and  the  tech- 
nique of  their  art  comes  to  them  instinctively. 
Many  of  us  recognize  this,  but  very  few  real- 
ize that  a  dog  is  always  thinking  about  some- 
thing in  his  own  doggy  way,  and  that  to  watch 
him  when  he  is  unconsciously  expressing  his 


The  Incidents  of  Daily  Life      15 

thoughts  is  likely  to  be  instructive.  One  can 
see  those  thoughts  pass  through  his  brain. 

I  remember  at  the  Zoo  watching  a  couple 
of  young  chimpanzees  who  were  fondling  one 
another.  I  noticed  that  while  they  chattered 
playfully  and  happily  together,  the  corners 
of  the  lips  were  kept  well  forward,  and  the 
sounds  they  produced  were  softest  music. 
They  were  using  what  singers  know  as  the 
"forward  tone."  Then  a  quarrel  arose  be- 
tween them.  Taut  went  their  snarling  mus- 
cles, their  lips  were  drawn  back  sharply,  and 
their  voices  became  shrill,  harsh  and  unpleas- 
ant to  a  degree.  There  was  a  wealth  of  in- 
struction to  a  singer  or  actor  in  this  little 
scene,  for  the  whole  secret  of  musical  and 
dramatic  voice-use  was  there  apparent.  The 
lower  animals  are  great  instructors,  both 
morally  and  artistically,  if  we  would  only 
watch  them  with  humble  hearts  and  try  to 
understand.  No  actor  need  go  farther  than 
a  dog's  eyes  for  the  kernel  of  facial  ex- 
pression. 

The  significance  of  sound  is  neglected  here 
in  England.  As  a  rule  we  may  study  music, 
but  it  never  enters  our  heads  to  reflect  upon 


16  Training  for  the  Stage 

the  different  sounds  which  belong  to  the 
every-day  incidents  of  our  customary  life. 
Yet  such  apparent  trifles  as  the  singing  of 
the  kettle,  the  whisk  of  a  broom  over  the 
floor,  the  rattle  of  dust-pan  and  brush,  the 
clatter  of  the  tongs,  the  soft,  fine  sounds  as 
the  table-cloth  is  swished  from  the  table,  all 
these  apparent  trifles  act  upon  the  nerves, 
and  if  we  meditate  upon  them,  we  gradually 
find  that  we  have  got  the  key  to  a  new  king- 
dom and  that  a  thousand  things  are  becoming 
charged  with  meaning  which  before  we 
simply  failed  to  notice.  Sound  speaks  to  the 
imagination  with  a  power  the  force  of  which 
is  perhaps  not  fully  realized  until  our  other 
senses  are  dormant.  During  the  daytime  our 
eyes  seem  the  immediate  windows  of  our 
mind  and  keep  us  busy;  but  at  night,  when  we 
are  lying  awake  in  the  dark,  sound  holds  her 
empire,  and  the  slightest  rustle  for  which  we 
cannot  immediately  account  will  send  a  thrill 
of  terror  through  our  souls.  When  you  are 
sitting  alone,  tired  and  a  little  unhappy,  won- 
dering how  to  face  the  trifling  troubles  with 
which  this  world  is  beset,  have  not  you  some- 
times heard  a  little  sound  which  touches  a 


The  Incidents  of  Daily  Life      17 

cho  d,  opens  a  little  door  in  your  brain,  and 
out  pops  a  treasured  memory, — the  thought 
of  some  friend  with  whom  that  little  sound 
is  associated;  a  bicycle  bell,  recalling  a  boy's 
joy  at  the  gift  of  his  first  bicycle;  or  the  click 
of  your  watch  as  you  wind  it  up,  reminding 
you  of  an  old  man  who  once  stood,  with  his 
back  to  the  fire,  twisting  the  winder  of  his 
watch  as  he  talked  to  you,  and  called  you  his 
"dear  child."  It  is  just  one  little  thing  which 
brings  before  our  eyes  the  whole  picture. 

Though  we  think  we  can  all  see,  yet  even 
our  faculty  of  seeing  is  capable,  so  to  speak, 
of  infinite  cultivation.  It  is  one  thing  to 
see ;  another  thing  to  notice ;  and  yet  a  third 
thing  to  understand.  Ask  any  of  your  friends 
to  describe  some  one  you  both  know.  How 
much  will  that  description  really  convey? 
Shut  your  eyes  and  see  with  the  "eye  of  the 
brain" — the  eye  of  memory;  and  the  first 
thing  of  which  you  will  be  aware  will  be  some 
characteristic  attitude  of  the  man  you  want 
to  describe,  some  little  habit  or  mannerism 
which  has  remained  in  your  memory  as  a  sign- 
manual  of  that  man.  That  is  where  the  gift 
of  observation  comes  in;  it  is  not  so  much  a 


18  Training  for  the  Stage 

question  of  observing  everything  as  of  select- 
ing from  what  you  observe  the  things  that 
matter.  In  other  words,  observation  in  itself 
is  nothing.  One  must  discriminate  and  judge. 
Accurately  noted  and  tested  observation  is 
the  whole  secret  of  correct  interpretation. 

It  has  often  been  said  that  art  is  a  matter 
of  selection;  this  is  perfectly  true,  and  it  is 
with  a  view  to  making  our  selection  vividly 
individual  that  we  must  cultivate  the  habit 
of  seeing  everything.  So  many  people  say 
to  me : 

"I  don't  want  to  hear  what  other  people 
think,  in  case  I  only  echo  what  they  say." 

This  seems  to  me  a  short-sighted  policy. 
No  wise  person  will  express  an  opinion  on  a 
subject  that  he  does  not  understand,  and  you 
cannot  gain  a  true  understanding  of  any  sub- 
ject unless  you  have  looked  at  it  from  many 
points  of  view.  To  hear  the  opinions  of 
others  cannot  hamper,  but  may  probably  do 
good,  and  no  one  of  real  individuality  need 
fear  undue  influence.  The  danger  for  him 
is  that  he  may  narrow  down  into  self-opinion- 
ated obstinacy.  No  one  can  afford  to  ignore 
other  people,  least  of  all  the  actor,  whose 


The  Incidents  of  Daily  Life       19 

work  it  is  to  bring  the  character  of  others 
into  sympathetic  being. 

My  advice  to  every  actor  would  be  that  he 
should  try  to  get  at  the  inner  reasons  of  the 
opinions  and  characteristics  of  all  about  him ; 
never  content  himself  with  an  obvious  inter- 
pretation and,  above  all,  never  condemn. 
You  can  only  learn  if  you  put  yourself  in  the 
place  of  the  person  you  are  studying,  and 
feel,  for  the  moment,  all  that  secret  longing 
to  be  understood  and  not  to  be  blamed,  not 
to  have  to  blame  yourself,  which  is  buried  in 
the  heart  of  every  human  being,  but  which  is 
only  voiced  at  those  sacred  moments  when 
fate  has  broken  down  all  barriers,  and 
brought  us  face  to  face  with  our  bare  soul. 
We  all  make  excuses  for  ourselves,  for  if  we 
did  not  we  could  not  bear  the  scathing  light 
of  self-condemnation.  Let  the  actor  studying 
humanity  start  by  seeing  these  excuses  and 
accepting  them.  Let  him  feel  when  dissect- 
ing others  as  if  he  were  himself  being  dis- 
sected, and  he  will  find  at  the  bottom  of 
every  heart  the  spark  that  is  trying  to  fly 
upwards;  the  touch  of  human  nature  which 
is  the  soul  of  art,  because  it  is  the  call  of  our 


20  Training  for  the  Stage 

common  brotherhood.  When  he  has  taught 
himself  to  look  at  others  from  this  point  of 
view,  he  will  quickly  learn  to  summarize  the 
salient  traits  of  any  character  he  wishes  to 
present  in  such  a  way  that  his  performance 
will  have  so  much  impressionistic  truth  that 
it  will  carry  with  it  conviction.  Even  when 
the  balance  of  the  play  demands  that  he  shall 
bring  out  the  ugliest  qualities  of  the  char- 
acter he  is  playing,  yet  he  can  present  them 
in  such  a  way  that  their  very  force  will  make 
us  feel  the  truth  of  the  old  saying  that  "evil 
is  merely  the  converse  of  good"  and  we  shall 
know  that  it  is  environment  which  is  to  blame, 
and  that  humanity  itself  is  not  discredited 
by  this  representation  of  a  human  being. 

The  small,  the  trifling,  the  weak;  there  are 
two  ways  of  looking  at  all  these  things,  the 
way  that  debases  and  the  way  that  makes 
clear  the  inner  meaning.  To  be  shown  an 
ignoble  view  of  life — this  life  which  we  hu- 
man beings  share — is  depressing  to  us  all, 
and  to  some  natures  it  is  even  dangerous 
There  is  nothing  so  immoral  as  to  take  a  low 
view  of  humanity,  and  when  the  stage  lends 
itself  to  such  an  outlook  the  result  is  morbid. 


The  Incidents  of  Daily  Life      21 

Even  when  it  is  an  actor's  task  to  play  a 
character  of  a  poor  type,  he  can  represent 
the  foibles  of  that  character  in  such  a  way 
that  they  will  at  least  deserve  the  epithet — 
human.  This  he  can  best  learn  to  do  if  he 
studies  the  real  human  beings  round  about 
him;  casts  aside  the  temptation  to  judge  by 
appearances  and  gets  right  down  to  the  core 
of  things.  If  his  judgment  of  real  life  is 
good,  his  judgment  as  an  actor  will  be  good, 
and  his  work  will  be  of  the  type  which  helps 
to  ennoble  the  stage  and  to  make  of  it  that 
which  it  preeminently  should  be — an  edu- 
cation. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   VOICE  AND  ITS   POTENTIALITIES 

SINGERS  speak  of  the  "forward  tone."  It 
is  the  goal  of  their  desire  to  possess  the  "for- 
ward tone,"  and  they  bend  all  their  energies 
to  acquire  it.  Many  and  various  are  the 
methods  recommended  to  this  end,  and  mul- 
titudinous are  the  ways  in  which  they  attempt 
to  describe  what  the  "forward  tone"  really 
means.  I  think  the  simplest  way  is  to  re- 
mind the  student  that  when  you  want  to 
throw  your  voice  to  an  exceptional  distance, 
you  use  a  speaking  trumpet.  When  you  want 
to  make  your  own  voice  carry  to  a  distance 
without  effort,  the  obvious  method  is  to  use 
your  mouth  as  a  speaking  trumpet  by  a  little 
manipulation  of  the  lips.  In  the  last  chapter 
I  referred  to  the  way  in  which  certain  lower 
animals  move  the  corners  of  the  lips  when 
talking  in  their  various  animal  tongues. 
When  they  want  to  produce  an  offensive  noise 
or  a  noise  signifying  annoyance,  they  stretch 
22 


The  Voice  23 

the  lips  back;  but  when  friendly  or  affection- 
ate, when  pleading  with  or  cajoling  their 
friends,  they  keep  the  corners  of  the  lips  well 
forward,  and  so  produce  what  is  known  as 
the  "forward  tone."  In  other  words,  they 
are  using  the  mouth  in  the  form  of  a  trumpet; 
and  if  the  human  being  wishes  to  have  a 
round,  beautiful  tone,  he  must  also  use  his 
mouth  in  the  form  of  a  trumpet,  so  far  as  he 
can  without  making  grimaces.  It  is  the  cor- 
ners of  the  lips  that  matter.  Do  not  stretch 
them  back;  get  movement  of  the  mouth  by 
acquiring  power  over  the  muscles  that  control 
the  center  of  each  lip,  so  that  they  lift  easily 
from  over  the  front  teeth  without  stretching 
away  from  the  eye-teeth.  Besides,  this  po- 
sition makes  the  mouth  look  so  much  pret- 
tier, and  when  the  smile  comes  it  is  the  more 
striking  because  it  is  not  continually  sug- 
gested by  the  habit  of  keeping  the  lips  with 
the  corners  drawn  widely  apart  in  a  grinning 
position.  If  the  lips  are  lifted  in  the  center 
at  the  right  times,  and  so  kept  well  away 
from  the  teeth,  the  tone  will  be  pure  and  the 
articulation  clear.  Nothing  smothers  articu- 
lation like  a  lip  pressed  down  upon  the  teeth. 


24  Training  for  the  Stage 

This  muscular  control  can  easily  be  acquired 
by  any  one  who  will  watch  himself  in  the  glass 
for  a  few  moments  night  and  morning. 

Another  necessary  rule  in  acquiring  a  pure, 
round  tone  is  to  keep  the  tongue  well  hol- 
lowed in  the  mouth;  the  tip  and  sides  are 
raised  to  the  teeth  very,  very  lightly,  but  the 
center  of  the  tongue  should  be  hollowed 
downwards,  so  that  the  back  of  the  throat 
can  be  clearly  seen  when  the  mouth  is  a  little 
open.  If  the  student  stands  before  a  glass 
and  simply  wills  his  tongue  to  lie  down  in  this 
position  for  a  few  moments  night  and  morn- 
ing, he  will  soon  find  that  he  acquires  control 
over  the  muscles  of  the  tongue,  and  that  it 
takes  this  position  of  its  own  accord.  By 
this  means  a  clear  passage  is  allowed  for  the 
sound;  but  when,  as  is  too  often  the  case,  the 
tongue  is  arched  up  like  the  back  of  an  angry 
cat,  it  is  acting  as  a  sponge  and  the  tone  has 
to  pass  through  it,  which  gives  it  that  thick 
sound  we  know  as  "woolly."  It  also  helps 
to  bar  the  passage  through  the  mouth  and 
drives  the  tone  up  through  the  nose,  es- 
pecially if  the  soft  palate  is  at  all  relaxed. 

Whether  you  are  training  as  a  singer  or 


The  Voice  25 

an  actor,  your  voice  will  never  last  unless  you 
use  it  as  carefully  and  rightly  in  everyday  life 
as  you  do  when  singing  or  acting.  Many 
people  who  have  ugly-speaking  voices  find 
that  they  have  a  good  singing  tone,  and  these 
people  who  have  ugly  speaking  voices  find 
throats.  They  don't  realize  that  as  they  can 
get  a  beautiful  tone  when  singing,  it  is  ob- 
vious they  can  equally  easily  get  a  beautiful 
tone  when  speaking;  that  their  ugly  speaking 
voice  is  simply  owing  to  false  usage,  and  that 
this  continual  false  usage  must  strain  the 
throat  and  bring  in  its  train  those  evils  which 
always  follow  careless  voice  production. 
Therefore,  to  these  people  I  say  emphat- 
ically: Start  your  work  of  improvement  on 
the  voice  that  you  use  every  day.  Don't 
run  away  with  the  idea  that  for  professional 
use  you  can  acquire  a  different  organ.  It  is 
the  same  organ  differently  used,  and  will 
never  last  unless  it  is  rightly  used  both  pro- 
fessionally and  daily. 

The  higher  notes  of  the  speaking  or  sing- 
ing voice  are  got  by  a  tightening  of  the  vocal 
chords  in  much  the  same  wry  that  the  high 
notes  of  a  violin  are  got  by  the  tightening  of 


26  Training  for  the  Stage 

the  violin  string,  and  a  continual  use  of  these 
high  notes  makes  a  continual  strain  upon  the 
vocal  chords  and  muscles  regulating  them. 
Not  only  these  muscles  but  that  other  set  of 
muscles  which  lifts  the  larynx  of  the  throat 
are  kept  in  use  exhaustingly  by  the  constant, 
reiteration  of  high  sound;  and  it  is,  there- 
fore, obvious  that  to  speak  on  a  lower  note  is 
infinitely  more  restful. 

Many  people  have  a  nervous  habit  of  tight- 
ening up  the  muscles  of  the  throat  and  even 
those  at  the  back  of  the  neck  when  speaking, 
especially  if  they  talk  rapidly  and  excitedly. 
This  nervous  tension  gives  an  edge  to  the 
voice,  which  affects  the  nerves  still  more,  and 
so  the  evil  increases  and  increases  until  the 
shrill  and  raucous  tone  is  an  irritation  to 
themselves  and  to  all  about  them. 

Avoid  undue  strain  of  any  sort.  Speak 
restfully  at  all  times  unless  the  exigencies  of 
the  part  you  are  playing  demand  otherwise. 

The  compass  of  the  voice  is  one  of  its 
greatest  beauties,  and  the  compass  of  the 
speaking  voice  can  be  greatly  increased  by  the 
use  of  a  very  simple  exercise.  Go  to  the 
piano,  strike  the  middle  E  flat;  speak  a  short 


The  Voice  27 

sentence  on  the  tone  corresponding  to  that 
note,  then  strike  the  semi-tone  below  and  re- 
peat the  same  sentence,  then  the  semi-tone  be- 
low again,  and  so  on.  Try  this  up  and  down 
on  each  semi-tone  for  a  few  moments  every 
day  until  you  have  acquired  the  power  of 
speaking  easily  on  your  highest  as  well  as  on 
your  lowest  tones.  But  be  very  sure  that  the 
speech  is  easy;  don't  let  there  be  any  strain- 
ing; just  talk  naturally  and  simply,  and  listen 
to  your  own  voice  as  you  talk.  Train  your 
own  ear  to  be  a  sure  judge  of  your  own 
utterance. 

Louis  Calvert,  in  his  very  interesting  book, 
Problems  of  an  Actor,  lays  great  stress  upon 
the  importance  of  the  consonants,  and  says 
in  effect :  take  care  of  the  consonants,  and  the 
vowels  will  take  care  of  themselves.  Now 
I  do  not  agree  with  this  at  all.  I  even  go  the 
length  of  thinking  that  one  of  the  reasons 
why  modern  actors  are  indistinct  is  that  too 
much  attention  is  paid  to  the  consonants  and 
too  little  to  the  vowels.  Consonants  are  im- 
portant, it  is  true,  but  most  people  sound 
their  consonants  correctly,  whereas  compara- 
tively few  use  pure  vowel  sounds,  though  it 


28  Training  for  the  Stage 

is  upon  the  vowels  that  we  depend  for  the 
music  and  the  suggestion  of  our  speech. 
What  is  the  meaning  of  the  word  "vowel"? 
Vocal.  Consonants  are  like  gates  shutting 
off  our  tone,  but  on  the  vowels  we  can  dwell 
for  a  long  or  a  short  time  as  pleaseth  us. 
This  gives  us  the  power  of  varying  the  pace 
at  which  we  speak,  and  on  this  variety  we 
depend  for  our  most  valuable  dramatic  ef- 
fects. Monotony  of  any  sort  is  deadly,  and 
monotony  of  pace  is  the  worst  fault  a  speaker 
can  commit.  It  reduces  all  he  says  to  a  jog- 
trot level.  Besides,  our  vowels  are  so  beau- 
tiful; our  "o"  especially,  so  characteristic  of 
our  race,  rings  out  like  a  deep-toned  bell.  I 
cannot  think  of  any  other  language  with  just 
its  full,  round  sound.  Its  pure  pronuncia- 
tion, even  here  in  England,  is  a  sign-manual 
of  breeding. 

Surely  vowels  are  worthy  of  a  little 
trouble.  Get  into  the  habit  of  speaking  every 
vowel  with  its  due  attention  in  every-day  life, 
and  you  will  soon  find  that  people  will  com- 
pliment you  on  the  carrying  quality  of  your 
voice.  If  the  vowels  are  jumped  over  and  the 
consonants  given  undue  prominence,  the  voice 


The  Voice  29 

always  sounds  hard.  It  fails  to  carry,  more- 
over, because  its  traveling  power  depends  on 
the  vowel — that  is  on  the  vocal  part  of  the 
words.  You  cannot  sustain  tone  on  any  con- 
sonant without  seeming  affected  or  melodra- 
matic. You  depend  for  the  even  volume  of 
the  voice  almost  entirely  on  a  pure  and  well 
delivered  vowel. 

Have  you  ever  noticed  how  quick  a  dog  is 
to  learn  the  value  of  a  vowel  sound? 
Change  a  consonant,  and  it  will  not  matter 
to  him;  change  a  vowel,  and  he  will  fail  to 
understand  you — a  very  significant  proof  of 
the  importance  of  vowel  sounds. 

Evenness  of  volume  is  essential  for  good 
stage  work.  A  speaker  who  lets  down  his 
little  words  so  that  they  almost  drop  out  of 
hearing  conveys  a  jerky  effect.  Think  of  the 
tone  of  an  organ,  how  it  differs  from  that  of 
a  piano  in  its  sustaining  quality,  and  learn  to 
sustain  your  tone  so  that  every  word  you 
speak  is  clearly  heard,  and  not  merely  the 
two  or  three  opening  words  of  a  sentence. 

Of  course,  one  does  not  want  to  be  af- 
fected, but  if  my  injunction  to  speak  in  daily 
life  with  the  same  care  that  you  would  upon 


30  Training  for  the  Stage 

the  stage  be  heeded,  there  will  be  no  affecta- 
tion in  clear  speech.  People  who  speak  care- 
lessly in  every-day  life  and  assume  a  careful 
utterance  only  for  professional  use  always 
seem  affected,  because  they  are  making  a 
conscious  effort  the  whole  time  they  are  on 
the  stage.  When  articulation  is  habitually 
clear  and  the  voice  well  used,  correct  speech 
becomes  so  characteristic  of  the  speaker  that 
it  adds  greatly  to  his  personality. 

The  best  way  of  acquiring  pure  vowel 
sounds  is  to  start  by  speaking  those  vowels 
on  which  it  is  easiest  to  get  the  forward  tone. 
These  are  "u"  (oo),  the  English  "o"  and  the 
foreign  "o,"  which  approximates  to  our  "or." 
Speak  these,  then  dwell  on  the  sound,  pro- 
longing it  into  a  singing  tone.  Having  done 
this,  say  "ah"  and  try  to  get  this  in  the  same 
"forward"  way.  In  other  words,  try  to 
speak  it  with  as  little  change  as  possible  in 
the  position  of  the  lips  and  mouth  from  the 
position  used  in  saying  "or."  Prolong  the 
"ah"  into  a  singing  tone.  Go  carefully  over 
these  four  sounds,  sometimes  singing,  some- 
times speaking  them.  Then  take  the  other 


The  Voice  31 

pronunciations  of  "a"  as  in  "an"  and  "rain." 
Treat  these  in  the  same  manner.  Then  take 
uer"  and  the  long  "ee,"  then  the  short  "e," 
This  last  will  be  difficult  to  get,  but  you  can 
manage  it  if  you  put  the  "oo"  sound  in  front. 
For  instance,  take  the  word  "wet"  and  dwell 
a  trifle  on  the  "w,"  which  is  practically  "oo." 
That  "oo"  sound  may  be  used  to  help  with  all 
the  vowels,  as  it  is  the  most  "forward"  of 
any.  When  you  have  grasped  the  idea,  viz., 
that  every  vowel  has  got  to  be  spoken  in  the 
"forward  tone,"  or  in  other  words,  with  as 
little  lapse  as  possible  from  the  position  of 
the  mouth,  tongue  and  lips  which  is  used  to 
pronounce  the  really  "forward"  vowels  "oo," 
"o"  and  "or,"  a  little  practice  will  soon  make 
perfect.  Change  from  singing  to  speaking 
when  practicing,  and  if  you  have  a  difficulty 
with  any  sound,  say  "or"  and  start  all  over 
again  until  you  can  get  it. 

With  regard  to  the  consonants,  there  are 
certain  dramatic  moments  when  they  are  very 
important,  chiefly  when  an  effect  of  tension 
is  required.  Much  may  be  done  by  the  way 
in  which  the  initial  consonant  is  pronounced. 


32  Training  for  the  Stage 

A  slight  pause  in  front  of  the  word,  and 
then  a  push  of  the  consonant  will  give  drama 
to  the  word  — 

He  is—  Dead! 

But  nothing  but  melodrama  will  result  from 
an  over-stressing  of  the  final  consonant  — 


He  is 


The  letter  that  starts  the  word  may  strike 
the  key  of  the  whole  word,  but  the  letter 
which  finishes  it  should  finish  with  the  word. 
Indeed  for  ordinary  usage  it  might  be  better 
if  we  English  people  bore  in  mind  the  rules  of 
euphony  instinctive  among  the  French  and 
Italians,  and  permitted  that  glide  and  liaison 
in  certain  cases  which  give  such  a  musical 
charm  to  the  Latin  tongues. 

Consonants  really  present  little  difficulty 
provided  one  can  acquire  the  knack  of  giving 
the  final  consonant  of  a  word  sufficient  im- 
portance without  clicking  it  off  too  sharply  in 
such  a  way  that  there  seems  to  be  a  final  "er" 
at  the  end  of  the  word.  I  have  heard  over- 
careful  speakers  talk  of  "a  greater  deal"  in- 


The  Voice  33 

stead  of  "a  great  deal"  in  their  anxiety  to 
give  the  "t"  in  "great"  its  value.  To  my 
mind  that  is  a  case  where  the  foreign  sense  of 
euphony  would  have  prescribed  a  liaison. 
Nothing  is  more  irritating  than  to  hear  a  final 
consonant  delivered  with  a  click  which  prac- 
tically amounts  to  an  extra  syllable. 

But  it  is  not  enough  merely  to  speak 
clearly.  The  voice  must  express  mood,  feel- 
ing, passion;  and  those  qualities  demand  a 
variety  of  tone. 

To  acquire  this  variety  without  becoming 
stereotyped  is  a  difficult  matter.  Words 
learnt  by  heart  and  constantly  repeated  are 
apt  to  become  stale  and  stiff  to  the  beginner, 
and  I  find  that  for  practice  it  is  better  to  let 
my  pupils  use  any  words  which  come  spon- 
taneously to  their  minds.  Take  each  emotion 
in  turn ;  let  us  say,  for  example,  that  you  start 
with  Fear.  You  imagine  to  yourself  that  you 
hear  some  noise  for  which  you  cannot  ac- 
count, and  gradually  you  realize  that  the 
sound  implies  a  danger  which  is  coming  closer 
and  closer.  To  express  this  you  say  any 
words  that  come  into  your  head,  as  for  in- 
stance : 


34  Training  for  the  Stage 

"What's  that?  Was  it  thunder?  No — 
it's  not  thunder!  What  can  it  be?  I  never 
heard  a  noise  like  that — what  can  it  be? 
The  floor  is  shaking!  Was  that  a  house 
falling  down?  The  ground  is  rocking  under 
my  feet!  It  is  an  earthquake!  Oh,  my 
God!!" 

Do  not  use  the  same  words  always  or  the 
same  idea ;  vary  it  and  vary  also  the  intensity 
of  the  emotion.  Remember  that  an  extreme 
emotion  is  easier  in  a  way  to  treat  dramat- 
ically than  a  commonplace  one,  which  re- 
quires delicacy  and  subtlety  of  expression  to 
pick  it  out  from  a  dead  level  of  dullness. 

Take  another  emotion,  say  Love: 

"My  dear,  I  love  you.  I  don't  know  how 
to  tell  you;  it  is  beyond  words.  When  I 
hear  your  footsteps,  when  I  feel  the  touch  of 
your  hand,  it  means  so  much  to  me  that  my 
heart  beats.  I  worship  you !" 

In  this  way  practice  tone  after  tone,  until 
by  the  mere  use  of  tone,  independently  of 
facial  expression,  movement  or  stage  setting, 
you  can  convey  any  feeling  that  you  please. 

A  tone  which  it  is  most  useful  to  acquire  is 
that  clear  whisper  which  the  French  call 


The  Voice  35 

"haleine  sans  voix"  (breath  without  voice), 
which  means,  of  course,  pure  articulation 
without  tone.  This  is  the  type  of  speech 
which  deaf  people  hear  with  the  greatest 
ease.  We  all  think  we  can  whisper,  but  not 
without  a  great  deal  of  practice  can  we  whis- 
per loudly.  Yet  this  knack,  once  acquired, 
is  extremely  useful  on  the  stage.  It  would 
be  impossible  to  play  the  murder  scenes  from 
Macbeth  effectively  without  it. 

Another  of  the  emotions  which  should  al- 
ways be  included  in  practice  is  Excitement; 
either  the  excitement  of  joy,  or  the  excitement 
of  suspense;  because  it  can  only  be  conveyed 
by  rapid  utterance.  One  often  hears  actors 
on  the  stage  let  down  the  big  climax  of  a 
scene  by  slackening  their  pace  just  when  it 
ought  to  quicken.  Nothing  excites  an  audi- 
ence so  much  as  quick  speech,  but  it  is  an  art 
to  speak  quickly  and  clearly,  and  it  can  only 
be  done  if  the  vowel  sounds  are  pure  and 
distinct.  If  you  try  to  stress  the  consonants 
alone  when  speaking  quickly,  you  will  tie  your 
tongue  in  knots ;  but  if  the  vowel  sounds,  how- 
ever short,  have  their  full  value  of  articula- 
tion, you  can  speak  as  quickly  as  you  like  and 


36  Training  for  the  Stage 

know  that  what  you  say  will  be  heard.  The 
ordinary  method  of  speaking  quickly  is  to 
jump  the  little  words  together  in  such  a  way 
that  it  seems  as  though  most  of  them  were 
swallowed,  as  they  do  not  sound  at  all.  This 
is  fatal;  one  must  keep  an  even  level  of  loud- 
ness,  making  the  big  words  ring  out  beyond 
this  again. 

It  is  just  as  difficult  to  speak  slowly  as  to 
speak  quickly,  and  the  most  necessary  thing 
of  all  is  to  make  the  audience  hear  what  you 
s\a\y.  As  they  will  have  most  difficulty  in 
doing  this  while  your  voice  is  strange  to 
them,  it  is  well  to  speak  the  opening  lines  of 
your  part  loudly,  slowly  and  carefully.  Later, 
when  the  listeners  have  got  used  to  your 
voice,  you  can  afford  to  hurry. 

If  only  actors  would  learn  to  speak  their 
final  words  on  a  circumflex  inflection !  Even 
when  the  last  word  is  a  two-syllabled  one 
they  speak  both  these  syllables  on  a  full 
stop — 

This  dear  dear 

England. 


when  surely  it  is  obvious  that  the  first  of  the 


The  Voice  37 

two  should  be  on  a  higher  note,  and  only  the 
very  last  drop  down  to  an  end — 


The  whole  secret  of  clear  utterance  lies  in 
this  little  matter,  and  many  a  dull  voice  would 
become  alive  if  only  this  one  detail  were  care- 
fully heeded. 

Another  frequent  fault  among  English 
speakers  is  that  we  emphasize  too  many 
words.  Although  we  often  drop  out  our 
little  words  (articles,  prepositions,  conjunc- 
tions and  even  pronouns) ,  we  hit  every  noun, 
verb,  adjective  or  adverb  with  an  emphasis 
which  does  not  really  ring  out,  but  produces 
a  barrel-organny  effect  of  grind,  grind,  grind. 
This  is  one  reason  why  English  actors  are 
slow  in  speech  and  never  acquire  the  pace  of 
the  foreign  stage.  Shut  your  eyes  and 
imagine  a  Frenchman  speaking.  There  will 
be  a  rush  of  words  and  then  the  key  word  of 
the  whole  sentence  will  ring  out  like  a  pistol 


38  Training  for  the  Stage 

shot.  Shut  your  eyes  and  imagine  an  Italian 
speaking,  and  you  will  be  struck  at  once  by 
the  difference  of  pace  in  his  pronunciation  of 
the  vowel  sounds  of  words,  even  in  one  sen- 
tence ;  how  quickly  his  liquid  tongue  slips  over 
some,  and  how  caressingly  he  dwells  on 
others.  It  is  this  marked  difference  in  the 
length  of  the  vowel  sounds  which  gives  the 
peculiar  music  of  Italian  speech.  An  Italian, 
with  his  innate  sense  of  drama,  uses  this  even 
in  every-day  life.  Both  the  Frenchman  and 
the  Italian  have  such  a  sense  of  the  impor- 
tance of  the  key  word  in  every  sentence  that 
they  make  it  stand  out.  So  emphatic  is  it 
that  even  if  one  does  not  gather  the  sense  of 
the  other  words,  it  carries  the  meaning  of  the 
whole  sentence  home.  But  we  plod  labori- 
ously through  our  sentences.  No  one  word 
stands  out  with  the  same  vigor  that  a  for- 
eigner uses,  yet  our  repeated  emphases  de- 
feat their  own  object  by  familiarizing  the  ear 
with  the  continually  recurring  effect  of  em- 
phasis which  is  yet  not  strong  enough  really 
to  seize  our  attention.  We  all  know  that 
English  speech  is  more  laborious  than  French 
or  Italian,  and  this  is  partly  why.  It  is  a 


The  Vdce  39 

pity,  as  in  some  ways  our  stage  stands,  to 
my  mind,  in  front  of  any  other,  especially  in 
the  matter  of  careful  detail.  Yet  that  is 
sometimes  the  root  of  the  evil.  We  are  apt 
to  overload  our  work  with  conscious  effort, 
and  in  that  way  to  obscure  or  miss  that  quick 
impression  which  drives  home  the  one  vital 
and  important  truth. 

If  Englishmen  made  a  greater  study  of 
emotional  changes  of  tone  these  faults  in 
their  speech  would  die  away.  We  think  too 
much  of  the  words  and  too  little  of  their 
meaning;  yet  it  is  only  the  meaning  that  mat- 
ters and  the  words  are  merely  its  servants. 
That  meaning  can  be  expressed  by  emotional 
tone  alone,  without  articulate  words,  if  the 
actor  has  sufficient  voice  control.  The  cinema 
is  teaching  our  actors  a  great  deal.  It  is 
showing  them  the  power  of  the  eye,  and  how 
facial  expression  can  stand  alone,  without  the 
help  of  words.  What  I  want  to  make  clear 
at  the  moment  is  that,  just  as  the  cinema  has 
taught  us  how  much  the  face  can  express  in- 
dependently of  words,  so  the  speaking  tone 
has  also  a  wide  range  which  our  actors  have 
not  realized  because  we  have  not  yet  an  art 


40  Training  for  the  Stage 

form  on  the  stage  in  which  the  speaking  voice 
has  to  depend  upon  its  tone  alone,  holding 
an  audience  without  the  aid  of  words.  The 
wonderful  resources  of  the  voice  have  not  yet 
been  fully  realized.  The  whole  art  of  tone- 
painting  is  a  closed  book  to  many. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  MUSIC  OF  THE  VOICE :  ITS  NOTES,  POWER 
OF  SUGGESTION  AND  MAGNETISM 

THERE  is  usually  much  character  in  a 
voice.  For  my  part,  directly  I  hear  any  one 
speak  I  feel  that  I  know  a  very  great  deal 
about  the  speaker.  It  is  not  always  the  most 
honeyed  tones  that  give  pleasure;  for  they, 
only  too  often,  suggest  insincerity.  We  are 
apt  to  distrust  any  one  whose  tone  is  always 
the  same,  because  we  feel  it  is  assumed.  It 
is  the  subtle  changes  that  reveal  character, 
and  any  one  studying  psychology  should  turn 
his  attention  closely  to  the  subject  of  voice 
and  its  infinite  detail:  inflection,  pronuncia- 
tion, accent,  music,  intonation  and  variety. 
Everything  about  a  voice  tells  its  story,  and 
that  story  is  intricate  and  mainly  to  be  read 
by  intuition,  which  is  in  itself  the  result  of 
sympathetic  study.  One  ought  to  make  one's 
voice  as  musical  as  one  can  merely  for  the 
sake  of  others,  for  an  ugly  voice  will  get  upon 
41 


42  Training  for  the  Stage 

the  nerves  of  the  listeners  and  in  some  cases 
inflict  real  pain. 

I  had  a  blind  friend  once  and  wanted  him 
to  allow  a  girl  I  knew  to  go  and  read  to  him. 

"Oh!"  he  sard,  "I  couldn't;  she  has  such  a 
rasping  voice  I" 

He  winced  as  he  spoke.  Blind  as  he  was, 
and  fond  of  books  as  he  was,  he  preferred  to 
forego  the  pleasure  rather  than  endure  the 
torture  that  voice  would  have  inflicted  upon 
him. 

It  is  a  torture.  I  know  that  when  I  am 
very  tired,  over-worked,  over-wrought  in 
every  way,  if  I  have  to  speak  to  any  one  with 
a  raucous  voice  I  find  it  difficult  to  listen  to 
what  is  said  because  my  mind  shrinks  from 
the  ugliness  of  the  sound;  and  after  such  an 
interview  I  feel  more  exhausted  than  after  a 
hard  day's  work.  The  nerve  strain  inflicted 
on  others  by  an  ugly  voice  is  incalculable, 
and  it  is  a  duty  for  us  all  to  make  our  voices 
as  musical  as  we  can.  A  little  thought  and 
care  will  do  it;  pure  vowel  sounds,  consonants 
clear  and  not  over-accentuated,  variety  of 
tone  and  musical  inflections — that  is  all. 
These  things  can  be  acquired  by  practicing 


Suggestion  and  Magnetism       43 

night  and  morning  for  a  few  moments,  and 
by  a  little  thought  all  day  and  every  day, 
when  chatting  to  our  friends.  "Musical  in- 
flection"— that  is  the  secret,  and  many  people 
will  ask  how  this  is  to  be  acquired.  The 
answer  lies  in  a  nutshell — keep  your  ears 
open  to  the  gifts  which  others  have  and  say 
to  yourself: 

"Now,  what  is  it  that  makes  So-and-So 
speak  so  beautifully?  Why  do  I  come  away 
from  a  short  chat  soothed  and  encouraged? 
It  is  not  only  what  is  said,  but  how  it  is  said." 

Then  think — what  is  the  secret  of  that  in- 
tonation ?  The  voice  rose  and  fell ;  it  tripped 
musically  down  the  scale,  climbed  up  by  min- 
ute inflections.  There  was  life  and  move- 
ment in  the  tone,  a  thousand  subtle  shades 
and  gradations,  difficult  to  express  in  words ; 
but  if  we  have  listened  with  attention  we  can- 
carry  away  a  mental  record,  and  that  memory 
will  serve  as  a  future  model. 

Listen  to  the  majority  of  speakers;  they 
talk  almost  on  one  note  and  with  one  tone. 
Break  up  that  monotony.  Remember  that 
variety  of  tone  is  got  by  a  succession  of  the 
tiniest  differences.  There  is  no  question  of 


44  Training  for  the  Stage 

the  semi-tone  interval  between  the  notes  of 
the  speaking  voice;  the  degrees  of  its  scale 
are  infinitely  more  minute.  Listen!  Listen 
to  everything  and  everybody.  When  you 
meet  a  voice  that  seems  to  you  full  of  char- 
acter, copy  it ;  and,  as  you  mimic,  notice  what 
you  are  doing  to  get  that  tone ;  how  you  are 
placing  your  mouth,  your  lips,  your  tongue, 
and  what  is  happening  in  your  throat.  If  it 
is  a  raucous  tone  you  are  copying,  you  prob- 
ably have  to  tighten  up  the  muscles  of  the 
throat  and  feel  an  unpleasant  sense  of  strain. 
If  it  is  a  beautiful  tone,  everything  will  be 
easy;  you  will  not  be  conscious  of  any  sen- 
sation in  the  throat,  but  you  will  feel  the 
air  playing  about  your  lips  as  the  tone  comes 
forward.  Mimic  every  one ;  give  your  voice 
all  the  practice  possible  in  acquiring  tone 
sounds,  and  yqu  will  soon  learn  to  control  it 
and  to  produce  in  every-day  life  exactly  the 
tone  which  is  most  characteristic  of  you  and 
of  the  thoughts  and  moods  you  wish  to  ex- 
press. 

All  tone  should  be  characteristic.  Never 
imitate  even  the  most  perfect  model  so 
slavishly  that  you  merely  become  its  echo. 


Suggestion  and  Magnetism       45 

Practice  mimicry  just  as  an  exercise,  and 
choose  fresh  subjects  as  constantly  as  possi- 
ble. You  need  not  be  limited  to  human 
voices.  Any  sound  of  nature  will  serve  for 
practice.  What  you  need  is  to  acquire  con- 
trol of  the  resources  of  your  own  voice,  and 
once  you  have  done  that,  if  you  have  any 
force  of  character,  any  initiative  of  your  own, 
that  character  and  that  initiative  will  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  control  you  have  acquired  and 
use  those  resources  to  express  your  real  self, 
without  any  further  conscious  effort  on  your 
part.  In  short,  it  will  become  second  nature. 
But  until  you  have  learnt  by  listening  to  the 
voices  of  others  and  studying  the  intricate  de- 
tail of  inflection  and  intonation  in  every  voice 
you  hear,  you  will  have  no  comprehension  of 
the  power  of  the  human  voice  or  of  the  mean- 
ing that  lies  stored  there. 

When  speaking  in  dialect,  inflection  is  even 
more  important  than  pronunciation.  James 
Welch  used  to  say  that  if  you  spoke  dialect 
parts  on  the  stage  too  correctly  the  audience 
would  not  understand  what  you  were  saying, 
and  that  the  secret  was  to  get  the  pronuncia- 
tion of  certain  words  correctly,  especially  in 


46  Training  for  the  Stage 

the  opening  lines,  and  always  to  keep  the  in- 
flection characteristic.  He  contended,  and  I 
think  rightly,  that  too  great  exactitude  de- 
feated its  own  object.  Every  county  has  its 
characteristic  inflection.  We  all  know  the 
inability  of  the  Welsh  to  come  down  to  a  full 
stop,  and  this  sing-song  is  recognized  as 
Welsh  immediately,  even  when  there  is  no 
accent  discernible.  In  the  same  way  inflec- 
tion is  important  in  handling  character  parts, 
even  more  important  than  tone.  It  is,  to  my 
mind,  the  surest  test  of  breeding.  A  well- 
bred  pronunciation  is  easy  enough  to  acquire ; 
but  a  well-bred  inflection  is  much  more  subtle, 
in  fact  so  subtle  that  many  people  are  entirely 
unaware  of  it. 

Each  foreign  country  has  its  inflection. 
For  many  people  broken  English  is  broken 
English,  and  serves  for  any  broken  English 
part.  But  the  inflection  used  by  a  French- 
man, Italian  and  German,  when  speaking 
English,  differs.  Again  I  can  only  say,  as  I 
have  already  said,  listen  and  imitate;  imitate 
every  one  and  listen,  not  only  to  the  pronun- 
ciation of  each  word,  but  to  the  recurring 
rhythm.  When  listening  to  the  speech  of 


Suggestion  and  Magnetism        47 

another,  separate  in  your  mind  the  pronuncia- 
tion of  the  words  from  the  inflection  of  the 
whole  sentence,  and  form  a  clear  idea  of 
each,  independently  of  the  other.  People 
from  one  district  will  differ  in  their  pronun- 
ciation of  single  words  partly  because  they 
will  differ  in  class  standing;  but  the  character- 
istic inflection  will  be  audible  in  some  form  or 
another  in  spite  of  class,  in  spite  of  educa- 
tion, in  spite  of  travel.  It  is  inherent  and 
often  ineradicable. 

The  way  to  catch  an  inflection  is  to  hum  it. 
Omit  the  words  and  get  the  musical  rhythm 
of  the  spoken  sentence.  Do  not  run  away 
with  the  idea  that  only  those  with  a  musical 
ear  can  catch  this  rhythm,  and  that  only  those 
so  gifted  can  copy  inflection.  This  is  not  so. 
The  ear  of  the  trained  musician  is  accustomed 
to  the  intervals  of  our  musical  scale;  but,  as 
I  have  said  before,  the  intervals  of  the  speak- 
ing voice  are  infinitely  more  subtle,  and  any 
observer  can  note  them  and  reproduce  them 
provided  he  has  acquired  control  over  his 
voice.  It  is  simply  a  matter  of  observation. 

Character  can  be  conveyed  to  the  voice  in  a 
thousand  ways.  All  sorts  of  tones  can  be  ac- 


48  Training  for  the  Stage 

quired  by  placing  lips,  tongue  and  teeth  in 
different  relative  positions.  Just  experiment. 
Keep  your  upper  lip  down  and  take  your 
lower  lip  a  little  off  your  lower  teeth.  Now, 
speak!  What  sort  of  voice  do  you  get? 
Hard  and  thin  and  discontented,  suggestive 
of  the  mood  which  your  face  expresses  when 
your  mouth  is  in  that  position.  Now  keep 
the  lips  a  little  together,  and  draw  the  corn- 
ers back  in  a  sort  of  artificial  smile.  Speak 
like  that!  Your  voice  is  sibilantly  sweet,  of 
a  thin  quality,  with  no  real  heartiness  behind 
it;  superficial  and  suave.  Now  draw  the  lips 
a  little  back  from  the  teeth  and  stretch  them 
into  a  smile,  and  you  get  a  touch  of  hissing 
which  suggests  the  serpent.  Clench  the  teeth 
a  little,  tighten  the  muscles  of  the  tongue  so 
that  it  is  drawn  back;  pull  down  the  lower 
lip ;  there  is  a  menace  in  the  tone ;  your  whole 
face  looks  vindictive.  Draw  the  tongue  back 
again,  and  keep  the  upper  lip  down ;  tuck  in 
your  under-lip.  You  growl  in  your  throat 
like  a  threatening  lion ;  and  you  look,  not  vin- 
dictive, but  dangerous.  Then  suppose  you 
were  happy  and  eager;  your  lips  would  be  a 
little  open,  the  corners  forward;  you  would 


Suggestion  and  Magnetism       49 

pant  slightly  and  the  tone  would  be  breathless 
and  full  of  joyous  expectation.  In  short,  if 
you  act  with  your  whole  face  so  that  the 
mouth,  that  most  expressive  feature,  falls 
into  line  with  the  mood  you  are  expressing, 
the  tone  will  follow  of  itself.  Practice  differ- 
ent tones,  but  be  quite  sure  they  are  coming 
spontaneously,  and  that  you  are  not  contort- 
ing your  features. 

People  who  are  putting  on  an  expression 
so  often  get  it  in  the  eyes  and  upper  part  of 
the  face  and  neglect  the  lower  part  alto- 
gether, which  remains  stiff  and  inexpressive. 
These  people  will  never  hit  the  right  tone  un- 
less they  deliberately  assume  that  tone.  In 
real  life  the  mouth  is  the  feature  that  gives 
us  away  before  any  other,  and  expression  con- 
centrates there  and  in  the  eyes.  In  real  life, 
moreover,  the  tone  always  follows  the  ex- 
pression as  a  matter  of  course.  To  what  is 
this  due  ?  Simply  to  the  fact  that  the  nerves 
and  muscles  of  the  throat  and  mouth  and  the 
features  of  the  face  are  under  the  dominance 
of  the  emotions  and  influence  the  tone.  A 
born  actor  does  this  instinctively,  and  in 
training  for  the  stage  it  is  essential  that  all 


50  Training  for  the  Stage 

emotion  should  dawn  first  in  the  eyes  and  on 
the  face,  and  the  words  and  tone  will  follow 
as  a  matter  of  course. 

The  quality  of  tone  habitually  used  by 
most  people  is  indicative  of  their  normal 
character,  and  I  have  often  marveled  that 
managers  casting  plays  do  not  pay  more  heed 
to  the  characteristic  voices  of  the  actors  they 
choose.  They  are  guided  by  appearance,  or 
by  the  fact  that  they  have  seen  the  actor  play 
a  similar  part  before.  They  are  sensible 
enough  to  know  that  a  tall  woman  cannot 
play  a  love  scene  with  a  short  man,  and  that 
it  is  better,  if  there  are  two  young  girls,  that 
their  coloring  should  contrast.  But  they 
never  choose  their  cast  with  any  idea  of  the 
blend  of  the  speaking  voices.  I  remember 
seeing  one  play — The  Wynmartins — which 
depended  upon  the  struggle  between  two 
women.  The  elder  of  the  two  had  long 
dominated  the  younger  (her  son's  wife) ,  and 
the  interest  of  the  play  turned  on  the  young 
wife's  struggle  to  cast  off  this  tyranny  and 
live  in  her  own  way.  The  two  women  were 
played  by  Agnes  Thomas  and  Marie  Temp- 
est, and  admirably  played  in  many  ways;  yet 


Suggestion  and  Magnetism        51 

there  was  far  too  little  suggestion  of  fight  be- 
cause Miss  Tempest's  voice  was  so  penetrat- 
ing and  vibrant  in  quality  that  one  never  felt 
that  Miss  Thomas  could  have  "downed"  her. 
Though  I  greatly  admire  Miss  Thomas  in 
parts  that  suit  her,  when  consulted  about  the 
casting  of  this  play,  I  strongly  urged  Lady 
Tree  for  the  part  of  the  mother-in-law.  She 
had,  to  my  mind,  exactly  the  quality  of  voice 
— sweetly,  sibilantly  insistent — which  would 
stand  against  Marie  Tempest's. 

Miss  Tempest  I  consider  the  greatest  act- 
ress on  our  stage.  In  this  play  she  had 
to  seem  the  under-dog  until  the  last  act,  and 
she  subdued  her  manner,  like  the  artist  she  is, 
but  she  could  not  take  that  potent  quality 
entirely  out  of  her  voice,  which  was  full,  as 
always,  of  her  own  personal  magnetism. 
Now  Miss  Thomas,  also  an  extremely  clever 
actress,  has  rather  an  ordinary  voice;  it  does 
not  linger  in  one's  memory.  Lady  Tree,  on 
the  other  hand,  has  a  very  characteristic 
voice.  You  cannot  think  of  Lady  Tree  with- 
out mentally  hearing  her  voice,  it  is  so  ex- 
pressive of  her.  This  marked  suggestion  of 
individuality  in  the  tone  was  exactly  what  was 


52  Training  for  the  Stage 

needed  to  give  point  to  the  fact  that  Marie 
Tempest  was,  in  this  play,  writhing  under  her 
domination. 

The  voice  is  the  last  thing  a  producer  ever 
really  alters.  He  may  hammer  and  hammer 
at  the  cast  until  he  gets  the  inflections  he 
wants,  but  he  cannot  charge  a  voice  with  mag- 
netism unless  that  magnetism  is  in  the  individ- 
ual. 

Some  women  are  quite  clever  actresses  and 
people  say: 

"Why  is  it  she  has  not  had  her  chance?" 

Then  perhaps  her  chance  will  come — and 
she  fails.  Why?  Her  acting  is  excellent;  as 
they  say  of  dogs,  it  is  "difficult  to  fault."  She 
is  a  handsome  woman,  and  her  speech  is  clear 
and  easily  audible.  What  is  the  matter? 
Simply  that  her  voice  lacks  magnetism.  It 
may  have  variety  of  inflection,  but  it  lacks 
that  subtle  quality  of  tone  which  suggests  a 
personality  vivid  enough  to  keep  the  atten- 
tion of  the  audience  through  the  whole  of  a 
long  play.  In  the  case  of  highly  magnetic 
temperaments,  the  voice  is  like  a  weather- 
cock; it  expresses  every  grade  of  health  or 
feeling.  A  face  may  flush,  an  eye  brighten; 


Suggestion  and  Magnetism       53 

but  if  the  health  is  bad,  the  voice  will  lose  its 
ring. 

Be  sure  that  your  voice  is  a  just  expression 
of  yourself.  Don't  pick  up  other  people's 
characteristics;  don't  be  over-precise,  or  over- 
conscious.  If  you  have  some  fault  of  pro- 
nunciation, practice  carefully  until  you  have 
overcome  it,  but  always  finish  your  practice 
by  pouring  out  a  flood  of  words,  just  for 
speed  and  spontaneity;  and  always,  when 
practicing,  speak  words  that  come  into  your 
head;  don't  learn  set  speeches,  but  make 
them  up  as  you  go  along. 

James  Welch  was  often  accused  of  gag- 
ging, and  it  was  very  hard  on  actors  who  had 
to  play  with  him,  as  they  never  knew,  from 
night  to  night,  what  he  was  going  to  say.  But 
he  told  me  that  that  was  how  he  kept  himself 
sane.  You  cannot  play  the  same  part  for  ten 
years,  as  he  played  Guy  de  Vere  in  When 
Knights  were  Bold,  without  the  repetition 
strongly  affecting  your  nerves;  but  the  fact 
that  he  was  wording  his  lines  for  himself, 
night  after  night,  kept  them  fresh.  It  was 
like  a  stream  of  running  water  flowing 
through  the  play. 


54  Training  for  the  Stage 

If  you  cannot  get  the  right  inflection  in  a 
speech,  just  put  the  sense  of  the  speech  into, 
your  own  words,  and  the  inflection  and 
emphasis  will  come  as  a  matter  of  course. 
We  are  always  our  own  best  teachers  and 
are  entitled  to  turn  the  light  of  our  individ- 
uality on  to  our  work  in  any  way  we  please, 
provided  that  we  do  it  for  the  sake  of  im- 
proving the  work  and  not  with  the  view  of 
subordinating  that  work  to  our  personal  van- 
ity. 


CHAPTER  V 

MOVEMENT  AND   FACIAL  EXPRESSION 

THE  power  of  the  eye!  These  words 
should  be  ever  present  in  the  actor's  mind, 
for  from  the  stage  point  of  view  the  eye 
should  be  the  birthplace  of  the  thought.  Un- 
less one  sees  each  fresh  chain  of  ideas  dawn- 
ing in  the  actor's  eye  before  he  speaks  the 
words  embodying  them,  he  will  give  the  im- 
pression that  he  is  merely  repeating  a  lesson 
learnt  by  rote,  and  what  he  says  will  not  seem 
spontaneous,  A  steadfast  gaze  compels  at- 
tention, and  if  an  actor's  eye  is  steady  and  in- 
telligent and  conveys  the  thoughts  he  wishes 
to  convey  as  if  they  had  just  that  moment 
entered  his  mind,  so  that  the  illusion  is  well 
sustained,  he  is  sure  to  hold  the  attention  of 
his  audience.  Where  the  stage  is  concerned 
the  eye  always  comes  first;  audiences  need  to 
be  interested  in  what  they  see  before  they 
will  listen  to  what  is  said;  and  unless  the 
eye  of  the  actor  speaks  to  the  eye  of  the 
55 


56  Training  for  the  Stage 

audience  the  words  he  utters  will  not  domi- 
nate their  intelligence. 

In  a  previous  chapter,  I  was  speaking  of 
the  expression  in  the  eyes  of  dogs,  and  how 
much  an  actor  may  learn  from  this.  We  all 
know  that  dogs  have  speaking  eyes,  but  have 
you  ever  watched  the  mechanism  of  their  ex- 
pression? It  consists  in  a  constant  use  of  the 
eyelids  and  the  balls  of  the  eye.  A  dog  will 
never  turn  its  head  when  turning  the  eye  will 
do  instead;  it  moves  the  eye-ball  without  the 
lids  far  more  than  we  do,  and  it  moves  the 
lids  themselves  in  a  variety  of  ways  that 
never  seem  to  occur  to  us.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  although  we  human  beings  drop  our  lids 
over  our  eyes  for  sleep,  or  half-drop  them  to 
shut  out  a  straining  light,  or  for  looking 
downwards,  we  keep  them,  in  ordinary  con- 
versation, more  or  less  in  the  same  position. 
Most  people  are  unaware  that  they  can  ac- 
quire further  control  of  their  eyelids.  Artists 
screw  up  the  eyes  to  look  at  their  pictures, 
and  some  people  half-shut  their  eyes  when 
laughing;  but  the  majority  of  us  lose  half  the 
value  of  the  eye  because  either  the  upper  or 
the  lower  lid — sometimes  both — is  habitually 


Movement  and  Expression        57 

too  far  over  the  eye,  which  lessens  its  size  and 
brilliance.  The  expression,  and  I  may  add  the 
beauty,  of  many  faces  may  be  increased  by 
practicing  an  exercise  which  trains  the  eye- 
lids to  go  back  off  the  eye,  making  it  seem 
more  liquid  and  alive. 

The  exercise  is  as  follows:  Stand  in  front 
of  the  glass  and  look  straight  at  your  reflec- 
tion with  your  normal  gaze.  If  you  put  your 
finger  just  below  the  eye  it  ought  to  bring 
the  lower  lid  down  merely  by  reason  of  its 
weight,  but  be  careful  not  to  pull  the  lid  down 
consciously,  or  it  will  come  down  too  far.  If 
this  fails  to  do  the  trick,  make  your  eyes 
start.  Then,  when  the  lids  are  well  off  the 
eye  and  the  eye-ball  as  prominent  as  you  can 
make  it,  try  to  relax  the  prominence  of  the 
eye-ball  without  letting  the  lids  go  back  to 
their  old  place.  Again,  start  with  the  eyes 
normal  and  turn  them  down,  down,  down, 
until  you  can  see  your  own  toes  without  let- 
ting the  upper  lid  fall  over  the  eyes.  Then 
roll  the  eyes  very  very  slowly  round  to  the 
right  side  and  up,  seeing  the  whole  of  the  wall 
to  your  right,  without  moving  either  upper 
or  lower  lids.  Roll  the  eyes  then  so  that  you 


58  Training  for  the  Stage 

Can  see  the  ceiling,  without  letting  the  lower 
lids  come  up,  and  complete  the  circle  by  see- 
ing the  wall  all  down  the  left  side,  until  you 
come  back  to  the  first  position,  with  the  eyes 
looking  straight  in  front,  and  both  upper  and 
lower  lids  drawn  back  from  the  eyes  to  their 
fullest  extent,  as  they  should  be  if  this  exer- 
cise has  been  properly  done. 

It  was  an  old  rule  of  the  stage  to  look  just 
above  the  eyes  of  the  actor  to  whom  you 
were  speaking,  because  this  gave  a  more 
open-eyed  expression.  We  now  sneer  at  the 
old  stage  rules,  but  if  you  will  try  this  trick 
on  your  friends,  looking  not  into  the  eyes,  but 
just  to  the  point  where  the  hair  grows  (or 
should  growl)  at  the  top  of  the  forehead, 
you  will  find  that  they  do  not  know  that  you 
are  not  looking  into  their  eyes;  but  directly 
you  do  look  into  their  eyes  you  will  find  that 
your  lids  come  down  over  your  own  eyes, 
which,  of  course,  has  the  effect  of  making 
them  look  smaller. 

The  expression  in  dogs'  eyes  is  chiefly  due 
to  the  variety  of  positions  in  which  they  place 
their  eyelids.  When  very  appealing  they 
arch  the  upper  lid  tremendously;  and  nothing 


Movement  and  Expression        59 

is  more  significant  than  the  half-open  eye  of 
a  dog.  If  you  drop  the  upper  lid  well  over 
the  eye,  getting  a  half-open  effect  with  the 
lower  lid  well  down,  you  merely  look  sleepy. 
But  if  you  get  a  half-open  effect  by  lowering 
the  upper  lid  a  little  and  puckering  up  the 
lower  lid,  you  get  a  singularly  sinister  effect. 
If  through  the  slit  thus  left  you  can  make  the 
eye  gleam,  you  look  triumphant  malice  per- 
sonified. 

We  have  all  the  muscles  in  our  eyelids  that 
a  dog  has,  but  we  have  neglected  them  and 
no  longer  use  them  as  we  might. 

Of  course  it  is  always  a  mistake  to  grimace, 
but,  just  as  perfect  grace  depends  on  our 
having  every  muscle  of  the  body  and  limbs 
under  our  control,  so  dramatic  expression  de- 
pends on  our  having  control  of  the  muscles  of 
the  face.  Unless  this  control  is  disciplined, 
the  desire  to  move  one  set  of  muscles  will, 
nearly  always,  bring  about  an  unconscious 
use  of  another  set  of  muscles  at  the  same 
time,  so  that  with  every  movement  we  intend 
to  make,  we  make  also  an  unnecessary  one, 
which  very  often  spoils  the  grace  of  the 
whole  effect.  The  habit  of  grimacing  is 


60  Training  for  the  Stage 

largely  due  to  this  automatic  movement  of 
too  many  muscles  of  the  face  when  we  wish 
to  show  expression.  One  of  the  surest  ways 
to  gain  control  over  our  muscles  is  to  prac- 
tice the  habit  of  withdrawing  nervous  force 
when  and  where  we  please.  The  old  Del- 
sarte  exercises  are  particularly  useful  for  this 
purpose.  For  instance,  take  the  wrist  of  the 
right  hand  in  the  left  hand  and  let  the  right 
hand  hang  limp.  Then  shake  the  left  hand 
up  and  down,  as  it  is  grasping  the  wrist;  the 
right  hand  will  flop  up  and  down  with  the 
movement.  Use  the  same  idea  with  every 
part  of  the  body,  withdrawing  the  nervous 
force  from  every  part  in  turn.  This  is  an 
invaluable  knack  to  acquire,  as  it  is  the  secret 
of  a  really  natural  faint,  or  death  fall.  So 
many  actors  throw  themselves  down,  instead 
of  falling,  and  I  have  seen  an  actress,  carried 
across  a  stage  insensible,  whose  toes  were  ob- 
viously turning  up  with  energy. 

There  is  another  reason  why  this  is  a  use- 
ful trick  to  practice,  and  that  is,  that  if  you 
meet  with  an  accident  in  real  life  which  causes 
you  to  fall,  you  are  very  much  less  likely  to 
hurt  yourself  if  you  have  the  knack  of  with- 


Movement  and  Expression        61 

drawing  the  nervous  force  from  your  body 
and  falling  limp.  I  once  fell  from  the  top 
of  an  omnibus.  It  suddenly  lurched,  and 
another  passenger,  falling  against  me, 
knocked  me  over.  I  shall  never  forget  the 
green  face  of  the  conductor,  who  thought,  of 
course,  that  I  must  be  seriously  injured. 
When  he  found  that  nothing  was  broken,  and 
that  I  got  up  and  began  to  move  off  uncon- 
cernedly, he  showered  after  me  a  stream  of 
the  most  virulent  abuse,  as  if  it  were  my 
fault !  The  poor  man  expressed  his  real  re- 
lief by  a  flow  of  blasphemy  which  I  have 
never  heard  equaled.  It  was  certainly  an 
amazing  escape  for  me,  and  I  attribute  it  en- 
tirely to  the  fact  that,  directly  I  felt  myself 
falling,  I  remembered  my  Delsarte  training 
and  "decomposed."  I  might  have  decom- 
posed in  another  sense  if  I  hadn't! 

I  am  not  a  believer  in  set  poses  or  gestures, 
and  I  think  that  movement  is  very  seldom 
taught  in  the  right  way.  The  best  plan  is 
to  practice  movement  as  I  suggested  practic- 
ing tone.  Take  an  emotion  and  speak  any 
words  that  come  into  your  head,  letting  your 
face  and  gesture  express  these  words  natur- 


62  Training  for  the  Stage 

ally,  working  up  to  climax.  To  get  the 
hands  well  under  control  a  good  plan  is  to 
make  them  do  ordinary  every-day  actions 
without  the  actual  objects  which  are  usually 
the  reason  for  these  actions.  For  instance,  we 
are  all  in  the  habit  of  making  tea,  pouring 
it  out,  handing  bread  and  butter,  and  so  on. 
Imagine  the  tea  service,  cups,  plates,  etc.,  and 
go  through  all  the  actions  of  pouring  out  tea, 
serving  the  visitors  and  helping  yourself  with- 
out the  actual  objects.  Go  through  the  ac- 
tions of  brushing  and  dressing  your  hair,  and 
putting  on  your  clothes,  taking  care  that 
every  movement  you  make  is  really  what  it 
would  be  if  you  were  actually  doing  these 
things.  Test  this  Vy  having  the  real  articles 
near,  and  comparing  your  actions  when  using 
them  with4  your  actions  when  you  have 
nothing  to  help  you.  In  this  way  you  will 
learn  control  and  train  your  eye  as  well  as 
your  hand.  From  these  small  essays  in  pan- 
tomime proceed  to  bigger  things.  Invent  sit- 
uations and  play  scenes  by  yourself,  either 
with  or  without  the  aid  of  words.  But  if  you 
use  words,  let  them  be  those  that  come  into 
your  head  at  the  moment,  and  few  in  number. 


Movement  and  Expression        63 

In  short,  practice  as  if  you  were  acting  for 
the  cinema,  always  bearing  in  mind  that  act- 
ing for  the  stage  must  be  broader,  quicker 
and  more  accentuated. 

Whatever  you  do  in  real  life,  notice  how 
you  do  it,  and  when  you  are  alone,  try  to  re- 
produce it.  Above  all,  keep  up  your  mim- 
icry, and  find  out  what  it  is,  that,  when  we  are 
walking  behind  strangers,  makes  us  know 
whether  they  are  young  or  old  or  middle- 
aged,  and  what  type  of  person  they  are. 

A  good  stage  walk  is  an  important  point  in 
an  actor's  equipment.  The  old  stage  rules 
on  this  matter  should  not  be  neglected. 
These  were  that  upon  entering  one  should 
take  one's  first  step  with  the  foot  which  is 
"up";  in  other  words,  if  you  enter  R.,  your 
first  step  is  made  with  your  left  foot;  if  you 
enter  L.,  with  your  right,  and  so  on.  When 
crossing  the  stage  take  long  steps,  moving 
from  the  hip  and  not  the  knee.  Put  the  ball 
of  the  foot  down  first  and  not  the  heel,  and 
avoid  too  springy  a  movement.  If  you  have 
to  "take  the  stage,"  finish  your  walk  with 
the  foot  that  is  "up,"  and  turn  on  the  balls 
of  the  feet.  For  instance,  if  you  are  cross- 


64  Training  for  the  Stage 

ing  from  R.  to  L.,  if  you  finish  with  your  left 
foot  down  and  turn  easily,  using  the  balls  of 
the  feet  as  pivots,  you  will  find  your  right 
foot  pointing  a  little  up  stage,  just  where  you 
want  it  for  your  next  movement.  Another 
old  rule  was  that  if  you  are  talking  to  another 
actor  on  the  stage  you  stand  with  the  weight 
of  the  body  on  one  foot  or  the  other,  not 
poised  between  the  two,  and  the  foot  that  is 
"up"  a  little  forward.  For  instance,  if  you 
are  standing  R.C.,  facing  an  actor  L.C.,  you 
would  stand  with  the  weight  of  the  body 
probably  on  the  right  foot,  and  the  left  foot, 
which  is  "up,"  a  little  in  advance.  In  this 
way,  although  facing  the  man  to  whom  you 
are  speaking,  you  show  more  of  the  face  and 
body  than  you  would  do  if  the  right  foot  were 
advanced  when  you  were  in  this  position. 

These  old  stage  rules  are  often  deliberately 
broken  nowadays,  and  it  is  right  that  they 
should  be,  because  a  disregard  of  rule  and 
regulation  makes  for  variety.  But  one  can- 
not break  a  rule  effectively  unless  that  rule 
has  become  second  nature  to  one. 

Poise,  of  course,  is  important  to  a  graceful 
carriage  on  the  stage.  I  usually  give  certain 


Movement  and  Expression        65 

wrestlers'  poses  as  exercises  for  acquiring 
this,  and  any  one  can  make  up  such  exercises 
for  himself.  The  important  thing  is  to  real- 
ize that  unless  the  subject  of  poise  is  under- 
stood and  the  weight  of  the  body  in  relation 
to  equilibrium  duly  considered,  the  actor's 
movements  will  lack  that  sense  of  quiet  as- 
surance which  is  essential  to  the  polish  of  a 
performance.  Any  eccentric  carriage  stamps 
an  actor  as  a  "type"  and  shuts  him  out  from 
impersonating  anything  but  that  type. 

Freedom  from  self-consciousness,  of 
course,  is  essential.  Whatever  exercises  you 
may  practice  to  acquire  grace,  forget  all 
about  them  when  you  are  actually  on  the 
stage.  Unless  an  actor  has  the  power  of  ab- 
sorbing himself  in  the  part  he  is  playing  to 
such  an  extent  that  he  moves  and  speaks  in- 
stinctively as  that  character  would  move  and 
speak,  his  work  will  never  be  convincing. 


CHAPTER  VI 

CHARACTER  IN  MOVEMENT 

ANY  one  who  has  studied  the  records  of 
past  centuries  must  have  been  struck  by  the 
fact  that  a  certain  type  of  attitude  and  ges- 
ture is  characteristic  of  each  age.  It  is  de- 
termined partly  by  the  costume  of  the  age. 
The  position  of  a  man's  hands,  for  instance, 
is  affected  by  the  position  of  his  pockets.  The 
carriage  of  the  head  is  greatly  influenced  by 
the  style  and  weight  of  the  head-dress,  and 
the  movement  of  the  feet  by  the  type  of  foot- 
gear; or,  in  the  case  of  women,  by  the  breadth 
or  tightness  of  the  skirt.  In  classic  dress  the 
body  was  carried  upright,  and  the  sandaled 
feet,  having  no  heels,  were  not  lifted  very 
far  from  the  ground.  You  can  tell  from 
the  frescoes  that  the  back  leg  was  rather 
dragged,  the  weight  of  the  body  being  bal- 
anced on  the  front  leg.  This  type  of  gait, 
with  its  exquisite,  lithe  languor,  ready  to 
spring  any  moment  into  pantherlike  activity, 
66 


Character  in  Movement  67 

is  to  be  found  among  savage  races,  whose  un- 
shod feet  cling  to  the  ground  as  did  those  of 
the  old  Greeks  and  Romans  in  their  sandals. 
In  the  middle  ages  the  long  points  to  the 
shoes  gave  a  different  type  of  gait  altogether, 
and  necessitated  a  rather  straight  lifting  of 
the  heels ;  while  the  Louis  XV  heels  poise  the 
foot  upon  the  toe,  the  pointed  toe  being  char- 
acteristic of  the  days  when  the  minuet  reigned 
supreme.  Farthingales  obliged  women  to 
carry  their  arms  away  from  their  sides,  with 
the  elbows  rounded  outwards;  as,  if  the  arms 
were  flat  to  the  sides,  the  farthingale  would 
have  been  knocked  in.  The  panniers  of  the 
Georgian  age  also  kept  the  arms  from  the 
sides,  but  in  this  case  the  arm  was  nearly 
always  bent,  as  it  was  the  custom  to  carry  a 
fan,  spy  glass,  snuff-box  or  other  trinket. 
The  elbow  sleeves,  with  the  lace  falling  from 
the  elbow,  showed  off  the  arm  to  perfection 
if  it  were  bent  at  the  elbow  and  the  bare  fore- 
arm carried  well  to  the  front.  The  high 
headdresses  of  this  period  necessitated  an 
erect  carriage  of  the  head  and  neck;  yet  I 
have  seen  a  Lady  Teazle  who,  with  a  moun- 
tain on  her  head,  lolled  it  to  one  side  in  such 


68  Training  for  the  Stage 

a  manner  that,  before  the  play  was  over,  it 
began  to  look  absurd. 

All  these  little  details  should  be  borne  in 
mind  when  playing  what  is  professionally 
known  as  a  "costume  part."  However  ob- 
viously the  differences  of  gait  and  movement 
seem  indicated  by  the  costume,  it  is  difficult 
to  change  one's  manner  to  fit  a  change  of  cos- 
tume without  a  little  practice.  It  is  a  useful 
exercise  for  the  student  to  imagine  himself 
garbed  in  the  costumes  of  the  various  histori- 
cal periods;  then  to  think  out  and  practice 
the  manner  characteristic  of  each. 

Many  a  Shakespearean  production  has 
been  spoilt  for  me  because,  although  the 
costumes  were  gorgeous  in  themselves,  their 
wearers  had  an  air  of  discomfort  in  them, 
the  manner  and  material  being  at  variance. 
It  is  all  very  well  to  say  that  Shakespeare 
should  be  played  and  spoken  like  life,  but 
what  do  we  mean  by  this?  Like  our  life  of 
the  twentieth  century?  This  was  not  the  life 
of  Shakespeare's  day,  and  those  exquisite 
blank  verse  lines  were  never  written  to  be 
chopped  up  into  little  bits,  like  the  tabloid 
talk  of  our  present  rapid  age.  Shakespeare 


Character  in  Movement          69 

meant  every  word  of  those  lines  to  tell;  he 
wrote  them  for  actors  who  were  going  to  play 
on  the  stages  of  his  time,  with  an  open-roofed 
auditorium  and  the  audience  distracted  by  the 
talking  of  the  nobles  sitting  on  the  stage.  He 
meant  those  lines  to  be  given  with  such  force 
that  they  compelled  attention,  and  he  wrote 
them  with  that  end  in  view.  It  is  "ridiculous" 
to  speak  them  "in  kid  gloves,"  as  one  might 
say;  they  were  not  designed  for  the  "talky- 
talky"  tone  of  the  intimate  theater.  Shakes- 
peare wrote  of  striking  events  befalling 
heroic  characters,  and  he  poured  all  his  own 
great  soul  into  his  work.  To  speak  them  as 
if  they  were  the  happenings  of  our  humdrum 
every  day  is  to  belittle  them  and  belie  their 
author's  intention.  To  my  mind,  a  perform- 
ance is  convincing  only  if  it  is  conceived  on 
a  right  scale;  to  apply  the  puny  methods  of 
modern  realism  to  Shakespeare  seems  to  me 
like  sticking  the  square  peg  into  the  round 
hole.  But  if  you  are  going  to  speak  blank 
verse  and  wear  costume  with  an  endeavor  to 
get  the  Shakespearean  atmosphere,  you  have 
got  to  be  familiar  with  both.  Get  into  the 
habit  of  speaking  verse  aloud  until  you  can 


70  Training  for  the  Stage 

make  it  up  for  yourself  spontaneously. 
Think  in  blank  verse !  It  need  not  be  good 
verse,  but  let  the  metrical  form  become  so 
familiar  to  you  that  you  can  fall  into  it  at 
any  time;  then  you  will  speak  it  as  to  the 
manner  born.  In  the  same  way,  if  you  are 
going  to  wear  costume  upon  the  stage,  wear 
that  costume,  or  something  very  like  it,  in  the 
privacy  of  your  own  home  for  a  week  or  two 
beforehand.  Get  used  to  it.  Then  your 
audience  will  have  a  chance  of  forgetting 
your  clothes  and  concentrating  their  atten- 
tion upon  you.  Study  the  pictorial  represen- 
tations of  the  period  of  the  play,  but  don't 
make  the  mistake  of  overlarding  your  per- 
formance with  attitudes  and  gestures  deliber- 
ately copied  from  those  pictures.  If  you  do, 
your  work  will  lose  all  spontaneity  and  be- 
come self-conscious  and  over-elaborated. 
Get  into  the  atmosphere  of  the  period  by  at- 
tention to  its  literature  and  art,  and  get  used 
to  wearing  the  clothes.  If  you  are  really  an 
actor  the  rest  will  come  of  its  own  accord. 
We  often  hear  people  speak  of  character 
in  handwriting,  character  in  the  lines  of  the 
hand,  character  in  physiognomy,  but  as  a 


Character  in  Movement          71 

rule  we  remain  blind  to  the  fact  that  there  is 
character  in  the  whole  carriage  of  the  body 
and  in  every  movement  of  the  head  and 
limbs.  It  is  impossible  for  any  one  even  to 
sit  in  a  chair  without  their  attitude  telling 
some  secret  of  their  being  to  an  observant 
onlooker.  It  is  not  only  our  handwriting, 
but  the  way  we  hold  the  pen,  which  tells  its 
tale;  and  nothing  betrays  mood  more  than 
the  movement  of  our  hands,  so  light  when 
happy,  so  heavy  with  despair. 

Actors  studying  character  parts  sometimes 
do  their  best  to  indicate  youth  or  age  by 
means  of  certain  stereotyped  trips  and  quav- 
ers; but  character  in  movement  is  a  much 
more  subtle  thing  than  this.  It  is  not  enough 
to  speak  of  "light-footed  youth"  and  the 
"lagging  step  of  age."  Whether  our  step  be 
elastic  or  stumbling  is  very  largely  a  matter 
of  mood;  and  even  the  young,  under  the 
stress  of  a  crushing  emotion,  will  walk  with 
leaden  feet. 

To  make  up  one's  mind  that  a  certain  car- 
riage is  suited  to  a  part  and  to  keep  this  un- 
varied from  beginning  to  end  of  a  play  is 
short-sighted  policy,  and  if  the  part  be  a  long 


72  Training  for  the  Stage 

one,  tends  to  get  on  the  nerves  of  the 
audience.  In  a  matter  of  this  sort  it  is,  as 
I  said  before  with  reference  to  dialect,  a  case 
for  a  little  discretion.  Choose  the  right 
moment  to  mark  a  characteristic  movement, 
leaving  the  rest  of  the  performance  a  ques- 
tion of  degree  according  to  the  feeling  of  the 
scene. 

If  you  want  to  study  character  in  relation 
to  movement  make  a  point  of  noticing  any 
one  behind  whom  you  happen  to  be  walking 
in  the  street.  Draw  all  the  deductions  you 
can  from  their  back  view;  then  quicken  your 
pace  and  pass  them,  glancing  quickly  at  their 
face,  and  see  how  far  your  deductions  are 
borne  out  by  what  that  face  conveys  to  you. 

I  once  asked  Hermann  Vezin  how  he  ac- 
quired his  peculiar  grace  of  carriage,  for  he 
was  like  a  living  statue,  like  an  old  Greek  god 
come  to  life.  He  wore  his  Inverness  cloak  as 
if  it  were  a  toga,  and  yet  no  one  would  ever 
have  dreamed  of  accusing  him  of  pose  or  af- 
fectation, so  free  from  all  self-consciousness 
was  he.  He  told  me  that  he  used  to  go  to 
museums  and  stand  in  front  of  beautiful 
statues  and  frescoes,  and  let  the  poses  "soak 


Character  in  Movement          73 

into"  him.  He  also  told  me  that  when  he 
was  young,  as  he  walked  along  the  streets,  he 
had  a  habit  of  watching  his  reflection  in  the 
shop  windows,  which  enabled  him  to  check 
any  fault  of  gait.  He  was  a  born  mimic, 
and  I  have  suffered  agonies  when  going  about 
with  him  because  of  his  habit  of  mimicking 
any  peculiarity  of  carriage  he  came  across. 
It  is  very  trying  to  pace  Pall  Mall  side  by 
side  with  an  elderly  gentleman  who  will  insist 
on  showing  you  how  a  lady  in  front  lifts  her 
skirt  and  minces  in  her  walk. 

I  referred  in  an  earlier  chapter  to  the  fact 
that,  when  we  think  of  any  of  our  friends 
we  see  them  in  our  mind's  eye  in  some  char- 
acteristic attitude.  So  true  is  this  that  we 
can  hardly  think  of  any  one  without  recalling 
the  position  and  gesture  which  seem  to  epit- 
omize the  owner's  personality. 

Great  writers  frequently  harp  upon  one 
trait  in  a  character  which  they  wish  to  set 
clearly  before  their  readers,  and  some  of 
them  represent  that  character  as  constantly 
using  a  certain  gesture,  which  epitomizes  the 
character.  As  an  instance  we  may  quote 
Dickens,  who  draws  Uriah  Heep  washing  his 


74  Training  for  the  Stage 

hands,  the  hangman  in  Barnaby  Rudge  suck- 
ing the  head  of  his  stick,  and  Jacques  III  in 
The  Tale  of  Two  Cities  with  rapacious  fore- 
finger smoothing  down  his  upper  lip.  If  act- 
ors took  a  hint  from  this  and,  when  studying 
a  character,  saw  clearly  the  attitude  and  ges- 
ture which  seem  to  epitomize  that  character, 
we  should  get  more  suggestive  work  upon  the 
stage.  We  frequently  see  the  would-be 
"character"  actor,  when  playing  an  old  man, 
attend  carefully  to  such  irritating  details  as  a 
palsied  head,  shaking  hands  and  quavering 
voice,  yet  make  the  part  merely  a  representa- 
tion of  senility  in  general,  omitting  the  more 
individual  traits  of  that  particular  man.  Old 
age  is  not  always  palsied,  and  it  does  not 
always  speak  in  a  cracked  voice ;  nor  is  their 
mere  age  the  most  significant  quality  about 
old  people.  For  the  honor  of  the  human  race 
actors  should  know  better  than  to  content 
themselves  with  such  conventional  devices. 

When  taking  character  parts  the  great 
thing  is  to  suggest  the  key-note  of  the  char- 
acter. If  you  are  clear  about  this  yourself 
and  have  any  power  of  conveying  what  you 
yourself  think  to  others,  you  will  not  fail  in 


Character  in  Movement          75 

filling  in  the  outward  details.  But  if  the 
inner  meaning  of  the  part  is  not  clear  to  you, 
if  you  are  not  perfectly  sure  in  your  own 
mind  of  the  type  of  human  being  you  wish  to 
impersonate,  all  the  mechanical  aids  of  as- 
sumed voice  and  studied  gesture  will  fail  to 
help  you  to  suggest  a  living  image  to  the 
minds  of  the  audience.  Details  are  all  very 
well,  but  essentials  must  come  first;  and  unless 
these  essentials  are  right  and  clear  and  sig- 
nificant, details  merely  serve  to  confuse  and 
obscure  the  impression  the  actor  wishes  to 
create.  On  the  other  hand,  if  an  actor,  being 
clear  about  the  innate  personality  he  wants 
to  represent,  can  see  that  personality  in  his 
mind's  eye  in  the  attitude  and  with  the  man- 
nerism which  really  epitomize  it,  and  can  re- 
produce these,  he  will  have  a  triumph.  I  am 
not,  of  course,  implying  that  he  is  to  cling  to 
them  from  first  to  last  of  his  performance, 
but  merely  that  he  is  to  use  them  at  the  right 
moments,  so  that  the  suggestion  they  convey 
may  go  home  to  the  minds  of  the  audience, 
who  will  then  have  grasped  his  intention  and 
will,  unconsciously,  aid  him  to  carry  it  out* 
Over-elaborate  work  is  always  a  mistake ;  be 


76  Training  for  the  Stage 

right  about  the  essentials  and  leave  them  to 
speak  for  themselves.  If  you  have  the  in- 
stinct of  acting  you  will  be  the  unconscious 
instrument  of  your  work,  and  will  "get  it 
over  the  footlights,"  because  all  you  do  will 
be  instinctive  and  sincere. 

Remember  that  the  art  of  the  stage  is 
largely  a  question  of  suggestion,  and  that 
every  trifling  thing  that  happens  on  the  stage 
is  apt  to  leave  an  impression  on  the  audience, 
which,  once  implanted,  it  is  difficult  to  erad- 
icate. For  this  reason  little  things  are  often 
of  the  greatest  importance ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  multiplicity  of  detail,  like  an  over- 
stocked shop  window,  simply  defeats  its  own 
purpose  and  reduces  everything  to  the  level 
of  nothing.  Too  much  gesture  is  irritating 
and  singularly  ineffective.  The  actor  who  is 
sure  of  his  effect  is  the  actor  who  never  moves 
without  a  purpose,  so  that  the  gesture,  when 
made,  stands  out  by  contrast  with  his  habitual 
stillness  and  seems,  therefore,  charged  with 
significance.  It  is  a  common  fault  of  the 
amateur  to  fidget  and  shift  about.  One  of 
the  first  things  he  has  to  learn  is  to  keep  still, 
and — above  all — never  to  move  in  such  a 


Character  in  Movement          77 

way  as  to  distract  the  attention  of  the 
audience  from  another  actor  upon  the  stage 
when  it  is  important  that  their  eyes  should 
be  focused  upon  this  other  actor.  When 
lines  have  to  be  spoken  containing  informa- 
tion relative  to  the  main  end  of  the  play — in- 
formation which  it  is  important  that  the 
audience  shall  understand  and  remember — 
it  is  an  invariable  rule  of  production  that  the 
actors  on  the  stage  should  keep  as  still  as  pos- 
sible, so  that  nothing  may  distract  attention 
from  the  actual  meaning  of  the  words.  As 
I  said  in  an  earlier  chapter,  it  is  an  unforgiv- 
able sin  to  attract  attention  to  oneself  by 
means  of  by-play  when  one's  part  is  not  im- 
mediately prominent  in  the  business  of  the 
scene.  It  is  just  as  important  to  know  how 
to  efface  yourself  at  the  right  moment  as  it 
is  to  know  how  to  rivet  attention  when  oc- 
casion demands. 

Remember  that  everything  to  do  with  the 
stage  is  effective  by  reason  of  contrast,  and 
that  what  you  do  will  be  infinitely  more  suc- 
cessful if  you  do  not  try  to  do  too  much. 
Vigor  owes  its  value  to  the  fact  that  it  con- 
trasts with  repose,  and  for  the  zealous 


78  Training  for  the  Stage 

amateur  repose  is  very  often  one  of  the  most 
difficult  qualities  to  acquire.  He  wants  to  be 
acting  all  the  time  and  finds  it  hard  to  realize 
that  one  must  not  consciously  try  to  act,  and 
that  one  is  only  an  actor,  in  the  higher  sense 
of  the  word,  when  impersonation  comes  of 
its  own  accord.  The  first  and  the  most  es- 
sential of  all  lessons  is  to  learn  to  sink  one- 
self. Think  of  the  play  first  and  foremost. 
However  proud  you  may  be  of  your  own  part 
in  that  play,  your  impersonation  will  only 
prove  of  value  if  it  takes  its  right  place  in 
the  scheme  of  the  whole  production.  Your 
part  will  stand  out  if  you  work  for  the  value 
of  the  scene,  but  if  you  think  of  yourself  only 
and  try  to  give  your  part  a  prominence  which 
is  detrimental  to  the  balance  and  purpose  of 
the  play,  you  will  find  yourself  associated 
with  a  failure,  and  will  have  produced  on  the 
minds  of  the  audience  a  sense  of  irritation 
no  less  real  because  they  may  possibly  be  un- 
able to  say  exactly  to  what  it  is  due. 


CHAPTER  VII 

WORDS  AND  THEIR  SPOKEN  VALUE 

THE  pronunciation  and  delivery  of  words 
do  not  by  any  means  exhaust  the  actor's  re- 
sponsibility towards  the  text  he  speaks.  One 
cannot  deliver  a  line  with  a  due  sense  of  its 
significance  unless  one  has  an  innate  and  cul- 
tivated instinct  for  the  right  word  in  the  right 
place.  In  the  old  days  we  used  to  say  that 
there  was  no  need  for  an  actor  to  be  edu- 
cated, and  even  went  the  length  of  implying 
that  education  was  detrimental  to  an  actor 
inasmuch  as  it  was  supposed  to  imbue  him 
with  the  acquired  characteristics  of  a  certain 
class,  and  render  him  less  adaptable.  The  in- 
flux of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  men  upon  the 
stage  and  the  conspicuous  success  of  the 
O.U.D.S.  as  a  training  school  for  actors 
have  done  much  to  break  down  this  old  preju- 
dice, which  sprang,  I  think,  from  the  days 
when  to  be  an  actor  was  to  be  practically  a 
social  outcast,  an  injustice  which  naturally  im- 
79 


80  Training  for  the  Stage 

planted  in  the   minds  of   actors   a   grudge 
against  the  educated  classes  of  society. 

I  have  harped  already  in  the  earlier  chap- 
ters of  this  book  upon  the  vital  necessity  for 
a  broad  and  tolerant  understanding  of  all 
types  of  human  nature,  but  study  of  human 
nature  alone  is  not  sufficient.  It  must  be  sup- 
plemented by  the  study  of  books.  The  value 
of  words  is  an  essential  part  of  an  actor's 
mental  equipment,  for  if  he  is  deaf  to  the 
literary  flavor  of  the  lines  he  speaks,  he  will 
do  them  less  than  justice.  Many  actors  find 
it  difficult  to  learn  accurately.  They  get  the 
sense  of  the  author's  meaning,  but  they  will 
alter  the  position  of  the  words  and  sometimes 
the  actual  words  themselves.  I  am  not  here 
pleading  for  the  author's  ideal,  which  is  that 
every  line  of  his  text  as  he  originally  writes  it 
shall  be  delivered  verbatim  on  the  stage,  be- 
cause no  one  with  any  experience  of  the  stage 
could  suppose  that  an  author  is  necessarily 
the  best  judge  of  the  stage  value  of  the  lines 
he  writes.  This  depends  on  the  author's  ex- 
perience, on  the  cast  engaged  for  his  play  and 
on  other  points.  But  I  do  want  to  make  it 
clear  that,  although  it  may  be  necessary  for 


Words  and  Their  Value          81 

the  producer  to  alter  the  wording  of  some  of 
an  author's  lines,  it  is  unfair  to  the  whole 
production  for  the  members  of  the  cast  arbi- 
trarily to  alter  this  wording  again,  merely  to 
accommodate  the  laziness  of  their  own 
memories.  Accuracy  of  text,  that  is  of  the 
text  which  is  ultimately  approved  by  the  pro- 
ducer, is  merely  a  matter  of  common  fairness 
to  the  author,  cast,  management,  audience 
and  every  one  concerned  in  the  performance, 
and  it  should  be  a  point  of  honor  among  act- 
ors to  keep  to  this  text  as  closely  as  they 
possibly  can. 

But  there  are  many  cases  in  which  it  is  im- 
possible to  do  this,  and  some  in  which  the 
play  does  actually  benefit  by  a  transgression 
of  this  law.  There  are  certain  actors,  usually 
comedians,  whose  own  wit  is  so  delightful 
that  good  lines  will  spring  to  their  lips  spon- 
taneously as  the  play  progresses,  and  when 
this  is  so  it  would  be  a  pity  to  deprive  the  play 
of  the  sparkle  and  freshness  which  such  lines 
introduce  into  the  dialogue.  It  does  not 
necessarily  follow,  however,  that  every  actor 
with  a  knack  of  gagging  improves  the  actual 
dialogue  of  the  play.  There  are  only  too 


82  Training  for  the  Stage 

many  instances  to  the  contrary.  It  is  certain 
that  an  actor's  spontaneous  lines  will  not  be 
of  the  right  type  unless  he  has  himself  a  real 
sense  of  the  value  of  words.  A  joke  depends 
so  much  for  its  point  upon  the  crispness  of 
its  wording,  and  a  line  which  is  charged  with 
emotion  is  trebled  in  value  if  it  consists  mere- 
ly of  two  or  three  poignant  words.  The 
arrangement  of  the  words  of  any  sentence 
will  go  far  to  make  that  sentence  effective  or 
the  reverse,  and  the  relative  value  of  every 
word  in  every  phrase  is  so  essential  in  the 
performance  of  a  play  that  it  should  be  one 
of  the  first  duties  of  an  actor  to  study  this 
subject  until  he  has  mastered  it  thoroughly. 
It  often  happens  that  some  little  thing  will 
go  wrong  upon  the  stage ;  one  of  the  actors 
will  dry  up,  and  another  will  have  to  gag  to 
cover  the  hiatus.  In  cases  of  this  sort  a  right 
use  of  words  is  invaluable,  and  actors  who 
have  this  resource  at  their  tongues1  end  will 
be  of  service  in  an  emergency.  Stage  life 
seems,  indeed,  a  continual  round  of  emergen- 
cies, and  resourcefulness  is  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance. Some  actors  are  unable  to  learn  a 
text  with  literal  accuracy,  and  they  continual- 


Words  and  Their  Value          83 

ly  give  wrong  cues  or  cues  which  are  not 
worded  exactly  as  they  should  be.  In  this 
case  the  actor  replying  to  the  cue  has  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment  to  re-word  his  reply;  and 
here  again  it  is  necessary  that  he  should  be 
quick  to  choose  the  words  which  will  best 
meet  the  occasion.  Especially  is  this  the 
case  if  the  play  is  what  we  call  a  costume  play, 
the  action  of  which  takes  place  at  a  histori- 
cal period,  as  in  this  case  an  actor  who  has 
no  sense  of  style  may  commit  the  mistake  of 
supplying  a  word  which  is  unsuited  to  the 
period.  I  remember  watching  with  delight 
Ellen  Terry's  exquisite  performance  of 
Olivia  in  the  dramatic  version  of  The  Vicar 
of  Wake  field,  when  all  of  a  sudden  the  illus- 
ion was  shattered  for  me  because,  as  she  was 
arranging  the  dear  old  Vicar  on  the  sofa,  she 
said:  "Come  along  and  let  me  make  you 
comfy  I"  To  genius  like  Ellen  Terry's  much 
may  be  forgiven ;  but  an  error  of  that  sort  is 
nevertheless  an  error,  and  the  greater  the 
performance  the  more  conspicuous  the  blem- 
ish. 

Costume  plays,  indeed,  cannot  be  rightly 
played  unless  the  actor  is  acquainted  with  the 


84  Training  for  the  Stage 

style  of  phraseology  which  belonged  to  the 
period  about  which  the  play  is  written. 
When  we  are  using  words  of  a  kind  different 
from  those  which  we  use  in  e very-day  life  we 
are  apt  to  show  that  they  are  unfamiliar  to 
us  by  delivering  them  in  a  stilted  and  self- 
conscious  way.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
a  costume  play  can  only  be  convincingly 
rendered  if  the  actors  playing  in  it  are  suffi- 
ciently familiar  with  the  literature  of  the 
time  to  use  words  characteristic  of  the  period 
with  ease.  If  an  actor  is  not  acquainted  with 
the  meaning  of  the  words  he  uses  he  is  liable 
at  any  moment  to  make  some  silly  mistake  if 
his  memory  should  be  temporarily  hazy.  I 
remember  hearing  one  lady  say:  "Father, 
will  you  shrove  me?"  She  meant  "shrive 
me,"  but  as  she  had  not  the  least  idea  what 
the  word  really  implied  and  as  she  had  at 
some  time  or  other  heard  of  Shrove  Tuesday, 
which  she  associated  with  pancakes,  the  word 
"shrove"  came  more  easily  to  her  lips.  When 
I  ventured  to  point  out  the  mistake  she  said : 
"Oh,  it's  near  enough."  It  may  have  been — 
for  her ! 

I  remember  feeling  furious  with  the  late 


Words  and  Their  Value          85 

Sir  Herbert  Tree  because  he  would  say 
"Seneco"  for  Seneca  from  beginning  to  end 
of  one  particular  play;  I  do  not  know  why,  as 
he  was  certainly  the  last  man  from  whom  one 
would  expect  a  mistake  of  this  sort.  Such 
mistakes  get  on  the  nerves  of  anybody  in  the 
audience  who  happens  to  know,  and  the  only 
safe  way  to  avoid  them  is  to  be  well  read. 
Nowadays  we  have  a  wave  of  Shakespearean 
enthusiasm  passing  over  Stageland,  which  is 
certainly  all  to  the  good ;  but  as  I  listen  to  the 
modern  Shakespearean  performance  I  cannot 
help  fancying  that  some  of  the  actors  are  pat- 
ting themselves  on  the  back  for  getting 
through  the  lines  successfully.  I  have  no 
doubt  whatever  that  they  think  them  very 
beautiful;  but  somehow  I  rather  question 
whether  they  understand  their  full  meaning 
or  humanity.  I  think  they  look  on  them  as 
precious  things  much  as  the  ordinary  visitor 
to  a  museum  looks  on  the  curiosities  which 
he  is  allowed  to  view  in  their  glass  cases. 
This  is  the  mental  attitude  of  many  people 
where  Shakespeare  is  concerned,  and  has  also 
been  our  attitude  towards  Ibsen,  because  we 
are  familiar  with  him  in  the  stately  English 


86  Training  for  the  Stage 

of  William  Archer's  translation  and  know 
little  of  the  homely  fun  which  characterizes 
the  original  Norwegian.  From  this  and 
similar  errors  in  the  point  of  view  spring,  I 
believe,  the  chief  evils  of  what  Americans  call 
the  high-brow  school.  Evils  there  are  with- 
out a  doubt,  because  the  tendency  of  that 
school  is  to  put  good  work  before  us  in  such 
a  way  that  we  see  it  as  a  thing  apart  from 
our  daily  life,  and  are,  therefore,  unable  to 
assimilate  with  its  beauties  our  sense  of  the 
world  around  us.  This  is  a  mistake  quite  as 
great  as  that  of  over-modernizing  classics. 
From  the  Greeks  of  old  throughout  the  ages, 
from  the  great  Elizabethans  to  the  really 
earnest  writers  of  our  own  day,  we  find  that 
the  author  of  genius  draws  life  as  he  sees 
it  in  all  its  homely  setting,  embellished  by 
many  a  touch,  both  humorous  and  pathetic, 
from  his  own  personal  experience ;  and  if  the 
picture  which  ultimately  evolves  from  his  pen 
seems  to  us  above  our  own  estimate  of  com- 
mon things,  it  is  merely  because  with  his  more 
searching  vision  he  has  seen  what  we  have  not 
appreciated.  It  is  a  question  of  high  lights 
and  relief;  but  never  do  we  get  a  really  great 


Words  and  Their  Fatue         87 

dramatist  who  draws  characters  devoid  of 
humanity  or  puts  upon  the  stage  a  point  of 
view  whose  idealism  is  beyond  all  likeness  to 
the  truth.  Therefore,  when  studying  the 
works  of  the  great  masters,  we  must  always 
bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  what  their  charac- 
ters say  is  the  talk  of  those  around  the  play- 
wright, charged  with  the  message  and  the 
insight  of  his  own  penetrating  brain.  If 
we  play  these  characters  uon  stilts/1  if  we 
speak  those  lines  as  if  we  knew  that  we  were 
uttering  words  of  wisdom  beyond  the  ken  of 
common  humanity,  we  lessen  or  destroy  the 
value  of  their  message.  It  is  just  because, 
however  beautifully  expressed,  the  lines  of  a 
great  writer  have  always  in  them  the  touch  of 
our  common  humanity,  the  understanding  of 
that  which  we  all  feel  and  that  which  we  all 
know,  even  though  we  may  be  unconscious 
that  we  know  it — it  is  just  because  of  this 
that  such  lines  are  the  utterance  of  genius  and 
that  such  plays  last  through  the  ages  with 
their  vitality  unimpaired.  To  approach  these 
plays  with  any  feeling  that  they  are  beyond 
common  comprehension  and  concern  things 
outside  life,  to  treat  them,  in  fact,  as  objets 


88  Training  for  the  Stage 

de  vertu  and  to  trick  out  their  performance 
with  artifice  and  eccentricity,  is  to  my  mind  to 
do  a  great  wrong.  The  way  to  approach  such 
work  is  to  become  familiar,  not  only  with  the 
work  itself,  but  with  all  that  concerns  it;  and 
this  can  only  be  done  if  the  actor  devotes 
himself  to  literary  study.  He  will  then  gauge 
the  atmosphere  too  well  to  fall  either  into  the 
fault  of  aloofness  or  into  the  equal  error  of 
jarring  commonplace. 

One  often  hears  a  producer  call  up  an 
actor  for  the  delivery  of  a  certain  line.  He 
will  say:  "Don't  be  so  precious,"  using  the 
word  "precious,"  of  course,  to  mean  pedantic. 
I  am  not  aware  that  we  use  this  word  in  this 
sense  nowadays  in  any  other  connection,  but 
the  precieuses  of  the  days  of  Louis  XIV  give 
us  an  example  of  the  word  with  the  same 
meaning.  How  it  is  that  this  use  of  the  word 
"precious"  has  survived  upon  our  stage  I  do 
not  know  and  should  be  interested  to  hear. 
But  for  whatever  reason,  it  is  constantly  so 
employed  at  rehearsals,  and  it  has  always 
seemed  to  me  expressive.  It  clearly  conveys 
the  fact  that  the  actor  is  too  interested  in  the 
value  of  the  word  as  a  literary  curiosity, 


Words  and  Their  Value          89 

thinking  of  the  word  by  itself  apart  from 
its  relation  to  the  whole  sentence.  Now 
when  an  actor  is  well  read  this  does  not 
happen.  When  we  have  a  full  sense  of  the 
value  of  words  and  are  speaking  a  sentence 
which  is  particularly  well  expressed,  it  is  not 
a  single  word  which  will  strike  us  so  much  as 
the  balance  of  the  whole  sentence.  The  more 
that  sentence  seems  to  us  well  chosen,  the 
greater  will  be  the  conviction  with  which  we 
shall  speak  it;  and  it  is  those  actors  who  have 
a  sense  of  the  value  of  words  who  speak  their 
lines  with  conviction,  and  so  get  the  full 
meaning  of  those  words  over  the  footlights 
to  the  intelligence  of  the  listening  audience. 
We  are  all  crying  out  for  a  higher  stand- 
ard of  play  upon  our  modern  stage,  which  we 
feel  has  fallen  into  a  bad  way.  Unfortunate- 
ly, however,  our  intellectuals  show  a  tend- 
ency to  form  themselves  into  a  coterie  which 
demands  to  be  catered  for  apart  from  the 
general  public.  This  is  a  pity.  The  mission 
of  the  stage  is  to  promote  good  fellowship, 
and  anything  that  tends  to  separate  audiences 
into  cliques  is  detrimental  to  the  higher  pur- 
poses of  acting.  The  goal  for  which  we 


90  Training  for  the  Stage 

should  all  aim  is  to  raise  the  general  level  of 
the  stage,  and  we  can  only  do  that  if  we  all 
contribute  by  putting  into  our  work  the  best 
that  is  in  us.  At  present  the  managers  are 
usually  blamed  for  everything;  but  surely  the 
fault  lies  a  little  with  us  all.  The  critics  are 
too  inclined  to  shut  their  eyes  to  the  actor's 
point  of  view,  and  have  not  always  that  nice 
sense  of  the  technique  of  the  actor's  art  which 
alone  can  enable  them  to  distinguish  between 
the  work  of  the  actor  and  the  responsibility 
of  the  dramatist  himself.  The  public,  in  its 
turn,  is  sometimes  regardless  of  the  financial 
side  of  the  matter,  and  is  inclined  to  expect 
the  manager  to  take  a  speculative  risk  which 
only  a  multi-millionaire  could  afford.  Dra- 
matists keep  an  ideal  cast  in  their  mind's  eye 
and  are  not  always  able  to  see  that  in  deal- 
ing with  actors  they  are  dealing  with  human 
beings  and  must  allow  for  human  limitations. 
Some  of  them,  moreover,  are  apt  to  think 
their  own  dialogue  of  more  importance  than 
the  actor's  work,  and  do  not  give  enough 
chances  for  the  art  of  acting  to  come  into  its 
own.  In  other  words,  they  give  the  actors 
too  much  to  say  and  too  little  to  do.  Never- 


Words  and  Their  Value         91 

theless  the  actors  themselves  are  only  too 
often  to  blame,  because  some  of  them  think 
the  lines  of  their  parts  are  merely  a  vehicle 
for  emotional  expression  and  concern  them- 
selves with  the  meaning  of  those  lines  with- 
out a  due  appreciation  of  the  care  which  goes 
to  the  choosing  of  the  words  which  shall 
carry  the  full  force  of  that  meaning  home. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

AUDIENCES 

ALL  audiences  differ,  and  for  an  actor  to 
achieve  success  he  must  learn  to  develop  a 
sixth  sense,  an  intuition  which  enables  him  to 
feel  with  certainty  the  point  of  view  which 
any  particular  audience  is  likely  to  take.  He 
must  be  in  touch  with  his  audience  from  first 
to  last,  and  to  accomplish  this  he  must  have  a 
real,  though  perhaps  unconscious,  sensitive- 
ness for  the  needs  and  wishes  of  others.  I 
have  purposely  used  the  word  ufeel"  because 
it  is  a  word  we  use  professionally;  we  always 
talk  of  "feeling"  our  audiences,  as  if  we  had 
antennae  sensitive  to  every  unspoken  thought 
and  subtle  change.  An  actor  who  is  worthy 
of  the  name  will  vary  his  methods  according 
to  his  circumstances.  The  choice  of  cast  will 
affect  his  work;  if  he  is  playing  with  a  weak 
actor,  he  will  use  restraint;  if  with  a  strong 
one,  he  will  let  himself  go  with  considerably 
more  abandon.  He  will  be  guided  by  the  bal- 

92 


Audiences  93 

ance  of  the  play,  and  where  he  feels  that  the 
author  has  overwritten  a  scene  he  will  tone 
it  down;  but  if  he  feels  that  a  scene  is  under- 
written he  will  speak  his  lines  with  stress  to 
make  up  by  emphasis  of  tone  for  the  lack  of 
distinction  in  the  wording.  Directly  he  is  in 
front  of  an  audience  he  will  know  in  the  main 
to  what  type  of  people  he  is  to  play  and  will 
underline  what  is  likely  to  please  and  rein  in 
what  is  likely  to  be  misunderstood.  A  really 
good  dramatic  effect  will  be  suppressed  be- 
fore some  audiences  for  fear  that  it  should 
get  a  laugh,  taking  the  leap  from  the  sublime 
to  the  ridiculous  in  their  untutored  imagina- 
tions. The  moment  he  is  upon  the  stage  an 
actor  must  be  sensitively  aware  of  the 
thoughts  of  the  listening  crowd  before  him; 
he  must  study  their  point  of  view  or  he  can 
never  gain  dominance  over  them. 

Now  it  is  good  for  all  of  us  to  be  obliged 
to  consider  the  point  of  view  of  those  about 
us.  Perhaps  there  is  no  mental  training  more 
valuable  than  that  of  being  compelled  to  find 
a  mode  of  expression  for  that  which  we  wish 
to  say,  some  sure  way  to  convey  our  meaning 
to  brains  of  a  different  type  from  our  own. 


94  Training  for  the  Stage 

I  have  heard  actors  express  contempt  for  a 
certain  class  of  audience,  but  this  is  a  mis- 
take. One  may  take  it  for  granted  that  in 
every  audience,  however  unresponsive  the 
majority  may  seem,  there  will  be  at  least  one 
brain  that  understands,  one  spirit  to  whom  it 
is  well  worth  while  to  give  the  best  that  is 
in  us. 

There  is  a  certain  type  of  actor  who, 
through  some  kind  of  youthful  conceit,  is  apt 
to  think  it  not  worth  while  to  take  much 
trouble  except  for  a  first  night  or  for  some 
special  occasion.  And  indeed,  in  these  days 
of  long  runs,  an  actor  may  be  forgiven  for 
getting  so  stale  in  an  oft-repeated  part  that 
he  becomes  careless.  If  we  can  only  bear  in 
mind  the  fact  that  life  has  a  little  way  of 
springing  surprises  on  us  and  that  at  any 
moment  we  may  meet  a  brain  that  under- 
stands, perhaps  a  little  of  this  carelessness 
might  be  kept  in  check.  Some  actors  are  apt 
to  think  it  not  worth  while  to  do  any  work 
that  is  not  well  paid  or  done  under  flattering 
auspices.  I  remember  once,  when  I  was  re- 
sponsible for  a  small  charity  concert,  a  young 
actress  who  had  promised  her  services  failed 


Audiences  95 

me  at  the  last  moment  for  no  good  reason  at 
all,  and  I  asked  a  little  amateur  friend  of 
mine  to  take  her  place.  It  so  happened  that  a 
well-known  man  who  had  heard  of  the  pro- 
fessional actress  turned  up  at  the  concert  with 
the  purpose  of  seeing  her,  as  it  happened  to 
be  given  at  a  hall  a  few  steps  from  his  private 
house.  He  saw  instead  my  little  amateur 
friend,  promptly  offered  her  an  engagement, 
and  she  is  now  earning  twenty-five  pounds  a 
week. 

Now  this  girl  had  a  genuine  feeling  for 
humanity  in  her  heart,  and  that  is  why  she 
has  proved  successful  on  the  stage.  I  am 
strongly  of  the  opinion  that  if  we  have  the 
type  of  character  which  turns  up  a  mental 
nose  at  any  section  of  our  fellow  men  we  are 
unfitted  to  do  good  work  upon  the  stage. 

Remember  that  not  only  is  it  the  task  of  an 
actor  to  play  upon  the  feeling  of  his  audience ; 
he  is  also  depending  for  his  success  upon  their 
sympathy,  which  he  cannot  expect  to  receive 
unless  he,  in  turn,  is  ready  and  able  to  give. 
There  are  many  moments,  even  in  a  success- 
ful career,  when  we  have  to  beg  our  audience 
to  be  tolerant  towards  us.  Our  health  is  not 


96  Training  for  the  Stage 

always  at  its  best,  and  we  have  to  play  many 
a  time  under  a  disadvantage.  On  all  these 
occasions  we  hope  for  mercy,  and  in  most 
cases  receive  it;  for  though  an  audience  can 
be  cruel,  it  is  far  more  often  kind. 

No  actor  has  a  right  to  despise  any  portion 
of  that  public  from  whom  as  a  whole  he  re- 
ceives so  many  favors.  The  public  will 
always  respond  if  we  make  an  appeal  to  its 
sense  of  fair  play.  There  is  a  story  of  Mile. 
Mars,  the  great  French  actress,  which  pleases 
me.  She  had  been  a  favorite  all  her  life,  and 
when  she  was  getting  old  the  management  re- 
vived certain  plays  in  which  she  had  made 
successes  in  her  youth  that  she  might  play 
those  parts  once  more  before  retiring.  It 
happened  in  one  of  these  plays  that  she  had 
to  say: 

"Je  suis  jeune;  je  suis  belle!" 

The  audience  tittered.  She  quietly  looked 
up  and  said. 

"Je  suis  Mademoiselle  Mars." 

The  house  came  down  with  a  round  of  ap- 
plause. 

Many  of  us  nowadays  have  trained  brains, 
and  we  argue  about  psychology  and  dissect 


Audiences  97 

our  fellow  human  beings  with  subtlety  and 
understanding,  but  it  is  often  the  wrong  sort 
of  understanding;  it  is  cold,  criti'cal  and  over- 
emphatic  of  trifles.  True  comprehension  is 
an  impressionistic  sense  of  all  the  bigger  pos- 
sibilities of  human  nature,  beside  which  de- 
tails drop  into  their  real  insignificance.  All 
work  for  the  stage  has  to  be  more  or  less  im- 
pressionistic, and  no  amount  of  careful  detail 
will  build  up  a  real  bit  of  character  drawing 
if  the  main  traits  of  the  character  have  been 
misunderstood.  No  man  must  be  judged 
by  what  he  is;  we  must  always  bear  in  mind 
what  he  might  be.  An  actor  who  has  the 
power  of  eliminating  unimportant  circum- 
stances and  getting  at  essentials,  and  then, 
afterwards,  restoring  those  circumstances  and 
filling  in  each  little  detail,  so  that  they  fall 
into  their  right  places  in  proportion  to  the 
value  of  the  greater  attributes,  is  an  actor 
whose  work  is  going  to  have  depth  and  value. 
If  his  audience  is  of  the  intellectual  type,  he 
may  venture  to  give  them  what  he  actually 
sees  himself,  but  when  dealing  with  an  aver- 
age audience  he  must  adapt  his  own  concep- 
tion to  their  comprehension,  and  must  set 


98  Training  for  the  Stage 

the  important  things  before  them  with  clear- 
ness and  assurance,  which  can  sometimes  only 
be  done  if  certain  details  are  omitted.  The 
average  brain  can  only  take  in  one  thing  at 
a  time.  To  be  clear  one  must  often  express 
just  a  single  thought  and  hammer  at  it,  and 
that  is  why  impressionistic  methods  are  fre- 
quently the  most  effective  for  the  stage. 

It  is  all  a  matter  of  selection,  and  if  an 
actor  has  developed  that  sixth  sense  which 
enables  him  to  "feel"  his  audiences,  right 
selection  will  become  instinctive  to  him.  He 
will  give  them  what  they  want,  and  will  leave 
on  their  minds  a  clear  image  of  all  that  they 
need  to  understand  without  weakening  the 
effect  of  his  work  by  an  elaboration  which 
would  merely  bewilder. 

Everything  where  the  stage  is  concerned 
must  adjust  itself  to  the  conditions  of  the 
stage;  footlights,  the  size  of  the  stage  itself, 
and  the  size  of  the  auditorium — all  these 
things  must  be  taken  into  account.  In  a  small 
theater  one  need  not  raise  one's  voice  to  any 
great  extent,  provided  one's  articulation  is 
clear.  But  in  a  large  theater  much  more 
volume  of  tone  is  required,  and  it  is  harder  to 


Audiences  99 

get  a  natural  conversational  effect.  The 
actor  will  again  find  himself  obliged  to  adapt 
his  methods  to  circumstances.  The  easy, 
rapid  speech  and  delicate  facial  play  which 
would  be  effective  enough  in  the  one  house, 
will  go  for  nothing  in  the  other,  where  speech 
must  be  slower,  emphasis  stronger  and 
gesture  broader  to  get  over  the  footlights. 
In  an  intimate  theater  one  can  risk  subtle  by- 
play, but  on  a  bigger  stage  only  broad  effects 
are  obtainable,  and  some  marked  manner- 
ism or  bit  of  business  must  be  used  to  make  a 
character  stand  out.  For  this  reason  also  it 
is  necessary  for  an  actor  to  be  plastic.  At 
every  turn  of  his  career  he  will  find  that  he  is 
obliged  to  adapt  himself  to  circumstances. 

There  is  another  way  in  which  he  is  ex- 
pected to  comply — a  tiresome  way  and  one 
which  I,  myself,  think  is  greatly  to  the  detri- 
ment of  the  stage.  When  he  is  engaged  as 
an  understudy  he  is  expected  to  imitate  his 
principal,  and  in  some  cases  this  imitation  is 
driven  to  the  point  of  minute  mimicry.  A 
little  time  ago  actors  in  touring  companies 
were,  all  too  frequently,  supposed  to  copy 
even  the  voices  of  the  London  companies,  a 


100         Training  for  the  Stage 

method  which  led  to  the  propagation  of  the 
mannerisms  of  popular  stars.  I  am  glad  to 
say  that  the  evil  of  this  custom  so  quickly 
made  itself  felt  that  it  is  no  longer  rampant, 
and  where  it  is  still  to  be  found,  I  think  it  is 
often  due  to  the  fact  that  some  actors,  being 
naturally  mimics,  copy  instinctively.  From 
whatever  cause  it  springs,  it  is  greatly  to  be 
deplored,  for  it  knocks  all  the  spontaneity  out 
of  acting  and  sometimes  engenders  faults 
which  are  never  afterwards  thrown  off. 

Mimicry  is  admirable  practice  for  the 
actor,  and  I  should  certainly  advise  any  one 
going  into  the  profession  to  do  his  best  to 
mimic  those  about  him,  especially  when  he 
meets  types  that  are  likely  to  be  useful  for 
the  stage;  but,  though  able  to  copy,  he  must 
be  careful  that  he  only  does  so  at  will.  It 
must  not  become  a  habit  or  he  will  acquire 
the  knack  of  picking  up  all  the  intonations 
and  nervous  ways  which  most  irritate  him 
in  others. 

One  golden  rule  for  an  actor  is — Always 
listen  to  anything  that  others  have  to  say 
about  you,  no  matter  how  unpleasant.  As 


Audiences  101- 

Hermann  Vezin  once  said  to  me :  "Stricture, 
even  from  fools,  sometimes  does  good." 

If  other  people  think  certain  things  about 
us,  those  things  must  be  true  of  us  from  their 
point  of  view.  There  is  nothing  in  this  world 
so  healthy  as  a  good  dressing-down.  To  the 
credit  of  the  profession  be  it  said  that  actors 
take  this  sort  of  thing,  in  the  way  of  busi- 
ness, with  an  admirable  gratitude.  One  of 
my  truest  friends  to  this  day  is  that  well- 
known  American  actor,  Frank  Mills.  In  one 
of  my  early  criticisms  I  tore  a  performance 
of  his  to  ribbons  and,  instead  of  resenting 
this,  he  promptly  wrote  me  a  letter  asking 
for  more !  It  is  one  thing  to  take  a  "slating" 
in  private,  but  it  is  very  much  harder  to  have 
to  endure  this  sort  of  thing  in  the  presence  of 
one's  fellow  actors.  Yet  it  may  happen  to 
you  at  any  rehearsal  if  you  enter  our  cheer- 
ful profession — so  be  prepared  I  Think  of 
yourself  merely  as  an  instrument  to  be  used 
to  get  the  best  possible  result  for  the  good  of 
the  whole  play.  Look  at  yourself  im- 
personally as  a  third  person,  and  help  the 
producer  to  put  that  self  through  its  paces. 


CHAPTER  IX 


HOW  TO  UFEED"  AND  HOW  TO  BUILD  UP 


THE  phrase  uto  feed"  might  well  be  in- 
corporated in  our  daily  speech,  for  the  art 
of  "feeding" — in  its  dramatic  sense — is  inti- 
mately connected  with  the  art  of  living.  We 
mean  by  a  "feeding"  part  one  whose  object 
it  is  to  bring  out  the  salient  traits  in  some 
principal  character  and  to  serve  as  a  recipient 
of  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  that  character. 
All  old  plays  had  a  subsidiary  role  called  in 
theatrical  parlance  "the  confidant,"  as  read- 
ers of  Sheridan's  Critic  will  remember.  A 
well  written  "feeding"  part  eliminates  the 
necessity  for  soliloquies  and  proves  useful  as 
a  "pace-maker"  to  the  audience  by  suggest- 
ing to  them  the  attitude  they  ought  to  take 
towards  the  principal  characters  in  the  play. 
The  art  of  "feeding"  is  a  difficult  one  and 
is  somewhat  similar  to  the  art  of  accom- 
panying in  music.  All  singers  know  that 
their  finest  efforts  may  be  ruined  by  a 

102 


How  to  "Feed"  103 

bad  accompanist,  and  all  actors  know  that  a 
good  "feeder"  turns  the  task  of  a  star  from 
a  labor  into  a  joy.  As  in  the  case  of  the  ac- 
companist, the  qualities  that  go  to  the  mak- 
ing of  a  good  "feeder"  are  sympathy,  pres- 
ence of  mind,  quickness  of  judgment  and  dis- 
crimination. He  gets  very  little  credit  from 
the  general  public,  but  his  work  is  of  vital 
importance  to  the  profession,  and,  what  is 
much  to  the  point,  he  is  always  sure  of  steady 
work.  I  remember  hearing  James  Welch  say 
of  the  late  Charles  Allen:  "Acting  with  him 
is  like  playing  ball.  He  is  so  quick  at  toss- 
ing it  back."  Of  course,  what  Welch  meant 
was  that  Charles  Allen  had  the  knack  of 
looking  interested  in  everything  that  was  said 
to  him  the  whole  time  he  was  on  the  stage,  an 
invaluable  quality  and  in  no  way  to  be  con- 
founded with  the  habit  of  grimacing.  I  have 
seen  young  actors,  who  have  been  told  of  the 
importance  of  listening,  pull  so  many  faces 
when  any  other  actor  was  speaking  that,  in- 
stead of  increasing  the  interest  of  the  scene, 
they  have  simply  distracted  the  attention  of 
the  audience  from  the  speaker,  whose  words 
it  was  important  they  should  hear.  The  art 


104         Training  for  the  Stage 

of  listening  is  by  no  means  the  art  of  making 
faces.  It  depends  entirely  on  the  steady  and 
interested  expression  in  the  eye,  and  in  this 
respect  approximates  more  to  the  art  of  the 
film-actor. 

Once,  when  I  was  still  writing  as  a  dra- 
matic critic,  I  devoted  a  special  paragraph 
to  praise  of  an  unknown  actor  who  was  play- 
ing the  part  of  the  Clerk  in  the  Trial  Scene 
of  The  Merchant  of  Venice.  I  still  remem- 
ber his  face  distinctly,  and  the  quiet,  earnest 
expression  in  his  eye  as  he  listened  to  the 
proceedings  of  the  trial.  He  made  you  feel 
that  you  must  listen  too.  Of  course  this  is 
just  a  matter  of  suggestion.  Every  one 
knows  that  if  you  stop  in  a  street  and  stare 
up  at  some  particular  roof  a  crowd  will 
quickly  gather  and  stare  at  that  roof  too. 
You  have  suggested  to  them  that  there  must 
be  something  there  worth  watching.  This 
exemplifies  in  a  nutshell  the  art  of  listening 
on  the  stage.  If  you  listen  to  what  the  other 
actors  say  to  you  as  if  it  interested  you,  the 
audience  will  take  it  for  granted  that  it  is 
worth  while  to  listen;  but  if  your  attention 
obviously  wanders,  their  attention  will  be  apt 


How  to  "Feed"  105 

to  wander,  especially  if  you  do  anything 
which  attracts  it  in  too  marked  a  manner  to 
yourself.  "Do  as  you  would  be  done  by"  is 
an  important  maxim  of  conduct  for  the  actor, 
for  everything  on  the  stage  is  a  matter  of 
give  and  take. 

It  is  considered  selfish  to  get  above  another 
actor  on  the  stage,  as  it  obliges  the  other 
actor  to  turn  his  face  away  from  the  audience 
when  speaking  up  towards  you.  Duologue 
scenes  should  be  played  as  much  as  possible 
on  a  line.  Some  actors  have  an  inveterate 
habit  of  getting  slightly  above  any  one  else 
who  may  be  playing  with  them.  I  remember 
hearing  my  uncle,  William  Holman,  say  that 
the  only  way  to  cure  actors  of  this  fault  was 
to  stand  right  in  front  of  them,  as  it  imme- 
diately obliged  them  to  come  down  stage. 

No  matter  how  big  a  part  may  be,  there 
will  be  moments  when  it  is  "feeding"  some 
other  part  in  the  scene,  and  in  this  case,  in- 
stead of  feeling  impatient  at  the  subordinate 
position  to  which  you  have  temporarily 
lapsed,  you  should  welcome  it  as  a  moment  of 
relief  and  contrast.  In  the  building-up  of  a 
big  role  you  must  snatch  at  every  possible 


106         Training  for  the  Stage 

chance  of  variety,  and  indeed  a  variety  of 
varieties  must  be  considered  and  cultivated 
by  all  the  means  in  your  power. 

In  building-up  a  big  part  you  have  got  to 
eschew  everything  that  makes  for  limitations. 
It  is  essential  to  have  a  great  variety  of 
movement  and  gesture,  inflection,  tone  of 
voice,  mode  of  delivery,  and — above  all — 
pace.  Though  a  good  stage  walk  may  be  an 
asset,  yet  a  man's  walk  is  apt  to  vary  with 
the  state  of  his  emotions,  and  a  subtle  change 
of  gait  will  help  to  carry  the  scene  home  with 
a  dumb  intensity  more  pregnant  than  any 
spoken  words.  If  a  man  is  habitually  grace- 
ful, one  sudden,  awkward  movement  will 
arrest  the  eye,  and  no  beautiful  pose  will 
touch  our  hearts  so  surely  as  the  stumble  and 
lurch  which  great  emotion  forces  from  its 
victim,  who  sways  under  its  power  like  a 
drunken  man. 

The  same  with  gesture.  Be  graceful,  be 
decisive,  be  significant;  but  when  occasion 
calls,  be  clumsy.  We  lose  control  of  our 
physical  being  when  our  hearts  arc  wrung. 

Last,  and  most  important  of  all — be  care- 
ful that  your  pace,  tone  and  inflection  are 


How  to  "Feed"  107 

ever  changing.  A  monotony  of  pace  is  sure 
to  produce  a  somnolent  effect  upon  the 
hearer.  Nothing  is  so  exciting  as  a  rush 
of  words,  nothing  so  solemn  as  retarded  ut- 
terance. If  our  interest  is  sufficiently  aroused 
we  hang  upon  those  slowly  dropping  words, 
waiting  for  their  message. 

It  is  easy  to  cultivate  changes  of  tone. 
The  fault  of  most  of  our  speakers  is  that  they 
will  not  sacrifice  the  beauty  of  their  voice 
even  for  a  moment,  and  by  delivering  all  they 
have  to  say  in  a  uniformly  beautiful  tone 
satiate  our  ears  with  a  musical  monotony. 
Knock  out  the  tone  when  you  can  and  work 
for  contrast. 

Dogs  make  a  splendid  audience  on  which 
to  practice  intonation.  As  they  do  not 
understand  the  actual  words  you  utter,  ex- 
cept in  the  case  of  certain  words  with  which 
they  are  familiar,  it  is  the  tone  and  the  tone 
alone  on  which  you  must  rely  for  your  effect 
when  speaking  to  them  at  any  length.  Try 
it.  Stare  into  a  corner  of  the  room  and  sink 
your  voice  to  a  terrified  whisper.  Your  dog 
will  turn  his  head  and  look  into  the  corner, 
then  get  up  and  go  to  see  what  is  the  matter. 


108          Training  for  the  Stage 

Begin  to  speak  tearfully,  and  he  will  sit  at 
your  feet  and  whine  with  sympathy.  Talk 
lovingly  to  him  and  he  will  jump  on  to  your 
lap  and  kiss  your  face  and  lay  his  head  upon 
your  breast  like  a  happy  child.  Begin  to  talk 
about  fun  and  games,  and  he  will  dance  with 
delight.  Lose  your  temper,  and  he  will  prick 
up  his  ears,  but  he  will  know  you  are  not  in 
a  temper  with  him.  If,  however,  any  one  else 
speaks  angrily  to  you,  he  will  come  out  from 
under  the  sofa  and  growl.  It  is  all  due  to  in- 
tonation. Practice  on  your  dog,  and  you  will 
soon  learn  the  value  of  sound. 

Besides  the  mere  delivery  of  one's  lines, 
there  are  many  effects  which  a  clever  actor 
uses  to  build-up  his  part  and  make  it  more 
convincing.  Even  in  the  delivery  of  the  lines 
themselves  there  are  certain  little  tricks 
which  make  for  spontaneity. 

I  remember,  when  I  was  quite  a  school-girl, 
having  a  holiday  at  the  seaside.  I  went  on 
the  Wednesday  night  to  the  theater  to  see 
Drink;  not  at  all  the  sort  of  play  that  one 
would  expect  to  appeal  to  a  girl  of  my  age 
and  type.  Yet  the  marvel  of  Charles  War- 
ner's acting  so  held  me  that  I  went  to  every 


How  to  "Feed"  109 

performance  for  the  rest  of  the  week,  and 
always,  when  I  saw  the  play  billed  after- 
wards, I  turned  up  again  to  see  it. 

Warner  had  a  little  habit  of  stopping  in 
the  middle  of  a  sentence,  repeating  a  word, 
pausing,  and  then  finishing,  which  conveyed 
extraordinarily  the  impression  that  he  was 
expressing  the  thought  that  had  that  moment 
come  into  his  mind.  Break  up  a  sentence  in 
this  way,  and  you  will  see  how  natural  it 
seems;  but,  of  course,  no  device  of  this  sort 
can  be  used  continually. 

Ejaculations,  also,  increase  the  freshness 
of  one's  speech.  Maxine  Elliot  is  an  artist 
in  the  use  of  ejaculation.  "H'm,  h'm!"  for 
"Yes,"  a  shake  of  the  head  and  a  smile  for 
"No" — any  little  characteristic  touch  of  this 
sort  will  give  individuality  to  one's  playing. 
It  is  certainly  necessary  to  seem  at  times  as  if 
one  were  pausing  to  seek  just  the  right  word 
to  express  one's  thought,  and  nothing  is  so 
torpid  on  the  stage  as  the  suggestion  that 
one  has  learnt  one's  lines  by  heart  and  is  de- 
livering them  like  a  machine. 

A  few  lines  on  make-up  should  certainly  be 
included  in  this  attempt  to  summarize  the 


110         Training  for  the  Stage 

many  details  which  combine  together  to  build 
up  a  good  performance.  It  is  impossible  to 
lay  down  hard  and  fast  rules  with  regard  to 
make-up  because  the  actor's  own  personal  ap- 
pearance must  be  the  deciding  factor  as  to 
what  paints  and  shadings  should  be  used.  I 
will,  therefore,  merely  say  this :  that  one  can 
seldom  get  a  good  effect  from  the  use  of  one 
grease-paint  as  a  ground-work,  and  that  it  is 
nearly  always  necessary  to  mix  two  or  more 
until  one  has  achieved  the  desired  result.  In 
short,  consider  your  face  a  canvas  and  paint 
on  it,  taking  pains  to  smooth  off  the  colors. 
Merely  to  line  with  a  lining  pencil  when  a 
"character"  make-up  is  required  is  unsatis- 
factory to  a  degree.  The  effect  must  be  care- 
fully considered  with  regard  to  high  lights 
and  shading,  and,  above  all,  the  size  and 
lighting  of  the  theater  must  be  taken  into  ac- 
count. Never  forget  the  back  of  the  neck.  I 
have  seen  so  many  actors  on  the  stage  whose 
make-up  finishes  on  a  line  with  the  face,  the 
back  of  the  neck  being  quite  a  different  color. 
A  good  stage  laugh  is  an  asset  and  can 
easily  be  cultivated  if  you  take  care  to  de- 
velop it  from  your  natural  laugh.  To  prac- 


How  to  "Feed"  111 

tice  ha-ha-ha-ing  all  the  way  up  and  down 
the  scale  does  no  good  at  all.  However 
musical  the  result,  it  remains  artificial.  Try 
first  to  get  a  little  gurgle  into  your  voice  as 
you  speak.  Let  the  joke  gradually  overcome 
you  until  you  are  bound  to  burst  into  a  laugh. 
Having  once  succeeded  in  making  yourself 
laugh  in  this  way,  laugh  again,  finishing  on  a 
higher  note,  and  once  again,  ending  on  a 
higher  note  still,  until  you  can  break  into  peal 
after  peal  of  laughter.  The  danger  now  will 
be  that,  having  once  started,  you  won't  be 
able  to  stop !  If  you  can  laugh  like  this,  the 
audience  is  bound  to  laugh  with  you.  But 
I  want  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  to  start 
with  your  stage  laugh  must  be  on  the  lines  of 
your  natural  laugh.  If  your  own  laugh  is 
ugly  never  mind.  Start  practicing  for  a  stage 
laugh  simply  by  trying  to  make  yourself  use 
your  own  laugh  whenever  you  please. 
Having  once  acquired  this  knack,  you  can 
then  improve  your  own  laugh  and  make  it 
more  musical,  and  your  stage  laugh  will 
naturally  become  musical  too. 

I  had  an  extremely  ugly  laugh  as  a  girl, 
and  the  first  elocution  teacher  to  whom  I 


112         Training  for  the  Stage 

went  tried  to  teach  me  to  laugh  by  pronounc- 
ing a  series  of  musical  ha-ha-ha's,  I  was  told 
to  start  high  and  come  down  the  scale,  which 
seemed  to  me  unnatural,  for  in  real  life  I 
always  go  up  the  scale  when  laughing,  as  I 
fancy  is  usually  the  case.  I  then,  of  my  own 
accord,  learnt  a  poem  which  amused  me,  and 
as  I  tried  to  say  it  aloud  I  began  to  laugh 
as  I  spoke  until  the  laugh  overpowered  the 
words,  which  became  inaudible.  After  that 
I  quickly  taught  myself  to  laugh  my  own 
laugh  naturally,  laughing  whenever  I  pleased. 
I  cannot  claim  for  it  that  it  is  a  thing  of 
beauty  even  yet,  but  I  am  always  told  it  is 
infectious,  and  sometimes,  when  I  have  been 
in  an  audience,  my  friends  on  the  stage  have 
said  afterwards  that  they  knew  I  was  there, 
as  they  recognized  my  laugh ! 

At  a  certain  stage  in  the  rehearsals  pro- 
ducers are  in  the  habit  of  saying: 

"Now  I  want  to  get  the  music  of  the  lines." 
The  music  of  the  lines  Is  a  quality  which 
must  never  be  forgotten.  In  this,  as  in  every- 
thing else,  contrast  is^the  thing  to  bear  in 
mind;  and  the  more  musical  your  tone  when 
occasion  allows,  the  more  dramatic  will  be 


How  to  "Feed"  113 

the  effect  of  a  change  to  a  tone  which  is  harsh 
with  emotion. 

When  trying  to  cultivate  music  in  the 
speaking  voice  be  sure  that  it  is  your  own 
natural  voice  which  you  are  using  for  your 
experiments.  When  I  was  a  school-girl  and 
my  voice  was  settling  down  from  child  to 
woman,  I  went  through  almost  as  marked  a 
change  as  that  which  boys  undergo,  because 
my  natural  voice  is  a  contralto,  so  often  an 
ugly  duckling  of  a  voice  when  it  first  begins 
to  settle.  The  result  was,  that  at  the  ages 
of  fourteen  and  fifteen  my  speaking  voice  was 
unchildlike,  and  my  people  objected  to  it.  I 
was  told  that  it  sounded  grumpy.  In  a  vain 
attempt  to  brighten  it  I  took  to  speaking  on 
too  high  a  note,  with  the  result  that  I  began 
to  get  varicose  veins  in  the  throat,  and  only 
overcame  the  mischief  by  careful  training 
with  that  well-known  voice-trainer,  the  late 
Mrs.  Emil  Behnke.  Therefore  I  say  very  em- 
phatically— when  practicing  use  your  natural 
voice.  If  it  is  ugly,  never  mind.  Directly 
you  begin  to  use  it  correctly  and  have  ac- 
quired the  knack  of  the  "forward  tone,"  you 
will  find  music  beginning  to  creep  into  it  until 


114         Training  for  the  Stage 

in  time  it  rounds  into  harmony  both  on  and 
off  the  stage. 

Whatever  devices  you  may  practice,  re- 
member that  they  must  never  be  used  unless 
the  part  actually  calls  for  them.  To  bring 
in  any  stage  effect  for  the  sake  of  effect  is 
to  insult  the  intelligence  of  your  audience. 
I  remember  one  actress,  whom  I  was  coach- 
ing for  the  part  of  Lady  Teazle,  begging  me 
to  let  her  introduce  a  scream  and  faint.  I 
told  her  that  I  could  see  no  suitable  moment 
for  such  a  bit  of  business,  but  she  only  said: 

"Oh!  but  I  must  introduce  a  scream  and 
faint!  I  did  in  that  last  play  I  played  in, 
and  got  such  a  round  of  applause." 

Very  likely ;  but  where  acting  is  concerned, 
though  you  may  make  a  small,  individual 
triumph  through  the  use  of  illegitimate  ef- 
fects, you  can  only  do  this  at  the  sacrifice  of 
your  professional  honor.  It  is  just  a  question 
of  what  you  most  value — a  transitory  success 
or  a  lasting  reputation.  However  commer- 
cialized an  art  may  be,  the  memory  of  its 
financial  magnates  soon  dies  away;  but  cen- 
turies will  pass  before  we  forget  a  Garrick 
or  a  Siddons. 


CHAPTER  X 

METHODS  OF  CERTAIN  FAMOUS  ACTORS 

OURS  is  supposed  to  be  a  profession  which 
develops  our  vanity  to  an  abnormal  degree. 
The  popular  idea  of  an  actor  is  a  creature 
who  wears  extraordinary  clothes,  who  goes 
about  doing  everything  he  can  to  focus  at- 
tention upon  himself,  and  who  is  essentially 
insincere  in  all  the  ways  of  his  daily  life. 
Now  this  is  absurd.  Our  whole  work  is  of 
a  nature  which  obliges  us  to  keep  a  constant 
check  upon  and  to  criticize  ourselves  unspar- 
ingly. Other  professions  demand  only  one 
facet  of  brain  and  character;  the  other  half 
of  the  human  being  is  free  to  relax  in  any 
way  he  pleases.  On  the  stage  we  are  using 
our  very  bodies  as  the  vehicles  of  our  pro- 
fessional work,  and  every  movement  of  those 
bodies,  every  tone  of  our  voice,  every  ten- 
dency of  our  mind  and  character  tells  in  our 
work.  The  stage  of  *o-day  is  especially  con- 
cerned with  the  presentation  of  modern  life, 
115 


116         Training  for  the  Stage 

and  the  way  we  behave  in  our  daily  life  sets 
the  standard  of  our  work,  because  it  influ- 
ences our  whole  outlook  and  consequently 
our  impersonations  at  the  theater.  We  have 
to  keep  a  watch  on  our  most  ordinary  acts, 
because  if  we  pick  up  a  bad  habit  we  are 
liable  to  reproduce  it  on  the  stage. 

Our  work  is  never  finished.  Night  after 
night  we  repeat  and  repeat  a  performance. 
We  cannot,  as  would  an  author  or  a  painter, 
finish  our  work  and  send  it  forth  to  the  world 
to  be  judged  on  its  merits  without  further 
effort  on  our  part.  We  have  to  give  our- 
selves to  the  daily  reproduction  of  our  work, 
and  when  we  cease  to  do  this  that  work  dies. 
Further,  we  have  to  be  continually  criticizing 
ourselves,  as  if  we  relax  for  one  day  the  per- 
formance on  that  day  may  fall  far  below  our 
standard  and  do  a  great  deal  of  harm.  It  is 
essential  for  an  actor  to  keep  up  to  his  level. 
The  whip  is  ever  behind  him,  lashing  him  on. 
Now  to  do  this  it  is  necessary  to  invite  con- 
tinual criticism,  because  we  get  used  to  our 
own  effects  and  soon  become  unable  to  judge 
of  the  merit  of  a  performance  which  we  are 
repeating  nightly.  I  am  myself  "indifferent 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      117 

honest,"  and  in  daily  life  I  fear  I  am  some- 
times guilty  of  the  courteous  evasion  when 
asked  for  my  opinion  on  subjects  apart  from 
professional  work;  but  I  should  never  dream 
of  insulting  any  actor  by  withholding  the 
honest  truth  from  him.  Sharp  as  my  criti- 
cisms have  often  been,  I  have  never  met  an 
actor  who  resented  them,  and  I  am  quite  used 
to  being  asked  to  view  a  performance  again 
and  again  that  I  may  judge  for  myself 
whether  the  improvements  I  have  ventured 
to  suggest  have  been  successfully  incor- 
porated. This  is  no  special  compliment  to 
me.  It  is  merely  the  attitude  which  any  actor 
worth  his  salt  takes  as  a  matter  of  course 
when  a  friend  criticizes  adversely,  and  the 
greater  the  actor  the  more  eager  he  is  to 
get  every  detail  of  his  performance  judged 
by  an  impartial  onlooker.  We  know  we  are 
too  near  our  own  work  to  criticize  it  for  our- 
selves. Before  rehearsals  are  over  even  the 
producer  and  manager  have  got  so  used  to 
the  play  that  they  have  "gone  stale"  and 
can  no  longer  rely  on  their  judgment.  For 
this  reason  during  the  last  week  of  rehearsals 
we  all  welcome  what  we  call  a  fresh  eye,  and 


118         Training  for  the  Stage 

any  comment,  no  matter  how  scathing,  will 
be  received  with  respect,  conned,  and  when 
possible  accepted.  When  I  was  working  for 
James  Welch,  he  used  to  like  me  to  see  the 
show  every  week,  and  always  after  the  per- 
formance I  had  to  detail  to  him  every  tiny 
thing  I  had  noticed,  and  he  would  make  a 
mental  note  of  it  all. 

I  remember  the  first  occasion  on  which  I 
ever  saw  him.  I  had  been  writing  as  a  critic 
for  some  time,  and  to  my  joy  one  day  I  got 
a  letter  from  him  speaking  of  my  criticisms 
and  asking  me  to  come  and  see  him.  The 
run  of  Mr.  Hopkinson  had  just  started,  and 
down  I  went  to  the  theater  to  see  the  show. 
After  the  first  act  his  secretary  came  along 
and  took  me  to  Welch's  dressing-room. 
Welch  stared  when  he  saw  me. 

"Why,"  he  said,  "I  thought  you  were  a 
big  woman !" 

At  any  rate  I  was  quite  as  big  as  he  was ! 
Then  we  settled  down  to  talk,  and  he  asked 
me  what  I  thought  of  his  Hopkinson.  I  said 
that  the  scene  with  the  Duchess  was  most 
sympathetic. 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      119 

"Sympathetic!  Sympathetic!"  he  said. 
"Hopkinson  is  an  outsider!" 

"Is  he?"  said  I.  "Right  through  the  play? 
Why,  I  thought  from  the  shy  way  you  tum- 
bled down  those  steps  at  your  first  entrance 
that  he  was  one  of  those  lovable,  nervous 
little  men  .  .  ." 

I  never  finished  the  sentence.  Welch 
simply  leaped  from  his  chair. 

"My  God!"  he  cried;  "then  that  entrance 
of  mine  must  be  all  wrong." 

You  see  the  point  of  view?  Not  for  one 
moment  did  he  imply,  not  for  one  moment 
did  it  enter  his  head,  that  my  criticism  might 
be  wrong.  The  mere  fact  that  any  one,  no 
matter  who,  even  the  biggest  fool  in  the  uni- 
verse, could  gather  such  an  impression  from 
his  entrance  was  enough  for  him.  His  point 
of  view  was  that  it  was  up  to  him  to  play 
Hopkinson  in  such  a  way  that  there  could  be 
no  possibility  whatever  of  misconception  as 
to  the  type  of  man  Hoppy  was  meant  to  be. 

Now  that  is  a  great  point  of  view.  No 
matter  what  qualities  we  may  possess,  the 
brain  which  at  a  whisper  of  criticism  looks 


120         Training  for  the  Stage 

first  within  itself  for  the  cause  of  the  fault  is 
the  brain  which  is  sound  throughout. 

I  remember  a  similar  instance  with  dear 
old  Hermann  Vezin.  He  had  been  giving  a 
recital  at  Steinway  Hall,  and  we  came  out  of 
the  hall  together.  An  exquisite  creature  in 
sables  came  up  and  gushed  all  over  him. 

"Oh,  Mr.  Vezin,  you  were  wonderful — 
more  wonderful  than  ever!" 

Vezin  whisked  round  to  me.  "Was  I  ?"  he 
said. 

I  was  only  a  girl  at  the  time.  That  did 
not  matter.  He  wanted  to  know.  Not  that 
Vezin  was  in  any  way  troubled  by  over- 
modesty.  He  had,  as  all  geniuses  must  have, 
an  appreciation  of  his  own  worth,  and  on 
another  occasion,  when  some  one  said  to  him : 

"Oh !  Mr.  Vezin,  you  are  one  of  our  great- 
est English  actors!'* 

He  turned  quietly  to  me  and  said:  "Where 
are  the  others?" 

The  knowledge  of  his  own  power  never 
hampered  Vezin's  careful  work.  In  fact  that 
work  suffered  from  over-study  on  his  part, 
for  his  fault  was  that  he  would  theorize 
about  acting  instead  of  trusting  to  instinct. 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      121 

Work  up  technique  by  all  means,  but  when 
you  are  playing  forget  your  technique.  Un- 
less you  can  do  this  it  has  not  become  second 
nature  to  you.  Theorist  as  he  was,  Vezin 
could  do  this  when  he  liked,  and  what  is 
more,  he  had  the  knack  of  imparting  tech- 
nique to  others.  He  was  a  splendid  teacher, 
and  singularly  free  from  personal  manner- 
isms; therefore  one  could  learn  of  him  for 
years  without  fear  of  picking  up  tricks  which 
would  give  the  training  away.  He  was  pains- 
taking to  a  degree.  I  heard  him  badger  one 
poor  pupil  for  a  whole  hour  in  the  vain  effort 
to  get  a  certain  inflection  out  of  him.  At  the 
end  of  the  lesson  he  said  to  the  pupil: 
"That  will  do  for  to-day.  Come  at  eleven 


to-morrow." 


"What  are  we  going  to  do  then?"  asked 
the  pupil. 

"This  over  again,"  said  Vezin. 

Strange  to  say  the  next  morning  ':he  pupil 
was  conspicuous  by  his  absence,  nor  did  he 
ever  come  again. 

Vezin  was  immune  himself  from  personal 
vanity,  and  it  never  entered  his  head  that 
other  people  could  be  less  stoical.  When  you 


122         Training  for  the  Stage 

went  to  him  for  lessons  you  never  knew  what 
might  be  your  fate.  You  might  think  you 
were  lucky  if  you  received  your  portion  of 
instruction  uninterrupted  except  for  the 
timely  comments  of  his  parrot,  who  had  a 
knack  of  ejaculating  "Scratch  me!"  at  in- 
opportune moments,  and  if  your  dramatic  ef- 
forts affected  her  too  acutely  she  would  say: 
"Go  to  the  devil !"  But  if  you  were  not  lucky 
it  would  be  a  great  deal  worse  than  this,  for 
Vezin  had  a  habit  of  admitting  every  one  who 
chanced  to  call,  and  often  his  little  room 
would  be  quite  full  of  people  listening  open- 
eyed  to  his  monotonous  reiteration  of : 

"Hence ;  home,  you  idle  creatures,  get  you 
home;"  and  your  more  and  more  inane  at- 
tempts to  copy  him.  They  all  stared  at  you 
with  a  pitiless  stare.  Nobody  seemed  in  the 
least  interested  in  you.  All  they  wanted  was 
for  you  to  hurry  up  and  finish  your  lesson  and 
be  gone,  which  you  would  have  been  thankful 
to  do,  but  Vezin  continued  inexorably  till  the 
full  hour  was  up. 

His  methods  were  wonderful.  He  was 
great  on  the  art  of  pause,  and  it  is  the  key- 
note of  expression.  A  word  doubles  in  im- 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      123 

portance  by  aid  of  that  little  halt  in  front 
of  it,  which  serves  to  pick  it  out  from  the  rest 
of  the  sentence.  Another  of  his  great  points 
was  constant  variety. 

"A  fresh  tone,  please,"  he  would  say,  "this 
is  fresh  matter." 

And  so  infinite  were  the  changes  of  his 
own  wonderful  voice  that  he  seemed  capable 
of  producing  new  intonations  as  a  conjuror 
produces  rabbits  from  a  silk  hat. 

The  pause  was  not  only  used  by  him  for 
emphasis.  It  was  also  employed  to  indicate 
the  birth  of  a  new  thought  in  the  brain  before 
it  found  utterance  through  the  tongue.  Yet 
these  pauses  never  seemed  to  make  his  per- 
formance slow,  for  he  had  an  admirable  pace, 
and  nothing  which  adds  to  the  life-like  effect 
of  the  performance  ever  seems  to  waste  time 
upon  the  stage. 

Vezin  had  great  control  over  his  breath 
and  always  advocated  the  practice  of  breath- 
ing exercises  with  the  care  and  attention  that 
an  opera  singer  would  devote  to  the  subject. 
I  personally  hold  that  breathing  exercises 
should  be  used  with  some  amount  of  caution. 
I  remember  once  I  went  to  take  a  class  at  a 


124         Training  for  the  Stage 

school,  following  another  teacher  whose  zeal 
for  breathing  exercises  must  have  somewhat 
outrun  her  discretion,  for  when  I  asked  the 
pupils  to  show  me  what  they  had  been  doing 
they  immediately  started  to  inhale,  and  they 
inhaled  and  they  inhaled  and  they  inhaled 
until  veins  stood  out  on  their  foreheads  and 
they  began  to  grow  purple  in  the  face.  For 
my  part,  I  think  that  if  you  inhale  gently 
through  the  nose,  hold  the  breath  while  you 
mentally  count  four  and  then  gently  exhale; 
then  inhale  again  through  the  nose,  hold  the 
breath  again,  then,  as  you  exhale,  count  aloud 
"One,  two,  three,  four,  five,  six,"  holding  the 
breath  between  each  number  counted,  you 
will  acquire  quite  as  much  control  over  the 
breath  as  if  you  tried  more  complicated  ex- 
ercises, because  the  little  stoppage  of  the 
breath  between  the  speaking  of  each  num- 
ber is  the  part  of  the  exercise  which  is  most 
valuable.  It  teaches  you  to  keep  hold  of  the 
breath  you  have  taken,  using  it  or  not  using 
it  at  will,  and  this  is  the  great  secret  of  breath 
control  when  speaking.  It  is  not  essential  to 
take  a  very  deep  breath ;  in  fact  it  is  just  as 
bad  a  fault  to  take  too  much  as  to  take  too 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      125 

little,  because  you  don't  know  how  to  get  rid 
of  the  residue,  but  it  is  essential  to  measure 
the  breath  you  have  taken,  using  for  each 
word  just  the  quantity  which  is  required  by 
the  force  with  which  that  word  is  to  be 
spoken,  and  retaining  the  breath  during  any 
little  pause  which  you  may  wish  to  make  be- 
tween the  words,  should  such  a  pause  be  nec- 
essary before  another  breath  can  be  taken. 

Suppose,  for  instance,  at  a  dramatic  mo- 
ment the  striking  of  a  clock  was  of  vital  im- 
portance, and  one  of  the  characters  had  to 
say:  "The  clock  struck  one."  To  say: 

"The  clock  struck  one" 

with  the  breath  escaping  evenly  is  not  ef- 
fective. You  have  to  say: 

"The  clock  struck ONE." 

The  pause  in  front  of  the  "one"  is  the 
type  of  pause  on  which  dear  old  Hermann 
Vezin  laid  such  stress  as  a  means  of  giving 
emphasis  to  the  word  which  follows.  You 
could  not  take  breath  before  the  word  "one" ; 
you  could  not  say: 

"The  clock  struck  v  one." 
That  would  be  gaspy.    You  have  to  say: 

"The  clock  struck " 


126         Training  for  the  Stage 

and  hold  the  breath  during  the  pause,  speak- 
ing the  word  "one"  in  a  loud,  decisive  voice. 
If  the  breath  has  not  been  held  during  the 
pause  there  might  be  insufficient  left  to  enable 
the  word  "one"  to  ring  out  with  the  requisite 
vigor. 

I  have  often  said  that  an  actor's  intelli- 
gence shows  in  the  way  he  takes  his  breath, 
as  so  much  depends  on  taking  it  in  the  right 
place.  You  must  mentally  look  ahead,  har- 
boring your  resources  and  preparing  for  what 
is  to  come.  Both  farce  and  drama  depend  on 
the  building-up  of  climax  upon  climax,  and 
this  crescendo  must  be  foreseen  and  allowed 
for.  If  audiences  only  realized  this  they 
might  be  more  generous  with  their  applause. 
The  great  scene  in  Othello  is  often  shorn  of 
one  of  its  finest  speeches,  known  in  theatrical 
circles  as  the  "Pontic  Sea"  speech,  because 
Othellos  who  play  this  scene  with  passion  are 
apt  to  find  it  too  exhausting.  In  the  old  days 
this  speech  was  almost  always  omitted. 
Macready  omitted  it,  and  Vezin,  who  was 
Macready's  rival,  was  proud  of  the  fact  that 
he  could  put  it  in.  But  he  told  me  that  if 
any  audience  had  failed  to  give  him  the  round 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      127 

of  applause  that  he  invariably  got  for  the 
speech  that  preceded  it,  he  would  not  have 
had  the  power  to  add  the  "Pontic  Sea" 
speech.  That  little  pause,  while  the  applause 
rang  forth,  gave  his  lungs  just  time  to  recover 
from  the  strain  of  the  preceding  lines.  I 
notice,  however,  that  all  the  speeches  are 
given  by  modern  Othellos.  Query — is  this 
because  they  get  their  applause?  Is  it  be- 
cause they  are  physically  more  vigorous  than 
actors  of  old;  or  is  it — could  it  possibly  be — 
because  they  don't  put  the  same  passion  into 
the  scene,  and  therefore  don't  find  it  so  fa- 
tiguing? I  leave  it  to  my  readers  to  say 
which. 

Welch  was  always  on  the  look-out  for 
types  to  mimic,  and  many  a  day,  when  we 
have  been  walking  along  the  streets  together, 
he  has  suddenly  clutched  my  arm  and  said 
excitedly:  "Agnes — Agnes!  Look!  Look!" 
I  have  looked  where  he  has  pointed,  and  seen 
some  terrible  specimen  of  tramphood  sham- 
bling down  a  side  street.  Off  would  go 
Welch  in  pursuit.  On  would  trudge  our 
quarry,  and  on  would  we  follow,  up  court 
and  down  alley,  round  posts  and  often  into 


128         Training  for  the  Stage 

pubs,  until  Welch  had  steeped  himself  in  the 
peculiarities  of  his  unsuspecting  model.  Then 
we  would  proceed  at  a  more  leisurely  pace  to 
the  theater,  where  he  would  spend  the  next 
hour  shambling  up  and  down,  dictating  letters 
in  the  vilest  Cockney,  interspersed  with  swear 
words. 

He  believed  in  studying  humanity  from  the 
life,  and  at  one  period  he  spent  a  large  por- 
tion of  his  time  at  the  Marylebone  Police 
Court.  I  suspect  also  that  not  a  little  of  his 
money  found  its  way  into  the  collecting  box 
there. 

He  was  curiously  affected  by  the  parts  he 
played,  and  while  studying  them  seemed  to 
be  obsessed  by  them  to  such  an  extent  that 
he  almost  became  the  very  man.  The  whole 
tone  of  his  daily  life  reflected  this  obsession, 
so  that  any  one  seeing  him  for  the  first  time 
when  he  was  rehearsing  a  Cockney  part 
might  be  excused  for  saying,  as  one  woman 
said  to  me,  "I  am  very  disappointed  in 
James  Welch.  He  is  such  a  little  Cockney." 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  Welch  was  an  extremely 
cultured  man,  a  great  reader,  who  loved 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      129 

beautiful  words  with  the  love  of  a  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson. 

I  have  always  had  a  great  admiration  for 
the  dramatic  temperament  of  Miss  Marie 
Tempest.  She  assumes  no  pose  and  never 
seems  over-driven  with  work,  maintaining 
her  mental  equilibrium.  As  an  artist  she  falls 
instinctively  into  "the  skin  of  her  part,"  and 
her  work  is  earnest  and  accurate.  In  all  the 
time  during  which  I  have  worked  for  her  I 
have  never  met  with  anything  but  kindness, 
and  she  has  shown  me  in  every  way  delightful 
consideration.  If  sympathy  be,  as  I  think  it 
is,  a  necessary  quality  of  genius,  she  has  it 
unmistakably.  She,  again,  is  most  intelligent 
about  her  work,  and  very  inventive  of  detail, 
which,  however,  she  is  careful  to  keep  in  its 
proper  place  as  subordinate  to  the  balance 
and  effect  of  the  play  as  a  whole. 

It  is  rather  difficult  to  describe  her  method. 
She  does  not  pose  as  one  who  has  devoted 
great  thought  to  her  work,  but  yet  at  each 
rehearsal  she  adds  some  delicate  and  subtle 
point  until  the  picture  of  her  whole  perform- 
ance is  filled  in  and  finished.  One  would 


130         Training  for  the  Stage 

never  say  of  her  work  that  it  had  been 
thought  out;  one  has  the  feeling  that  it  "just 
growed."  Yet  in  reality  it  is  built  up  of  a 
wealth  of  minute  detail.  I  know  no  actress, 
either  here  or  abroad,  who  can  represent  a 
conflict  of  two  emotions  as  Marie  Tempest 
can.  Her  work  is  above  all  things  subtle, 
and  as  such  is  deserving  of  careful  study  by 
dramatic  students. 

Ellen  Terry's  methods  are  always  spon- 
taneous. I  have  seen  her  play  the  same  parts 
time  after  time,  but  I  have  never  seen  her 
play  any  duologue  scene  twice  with  exactly 
the  same  movements  and  positions  on  the 
stage.  So  far  as  details  are  concerned  her 
work  is  clearly  to  a  certain  extent  due  to  the 
inspiration  of  the  moment,  however  much 
thought  may  have  been  given  to  the  study  of 
the  character  itself.  For  my  part,  I  believe 
in  spontaneity,  even  in  the  matter  of  produc- 
ing, when  it  is  accompanied  by  genius.  I 
think  that  by  trusting  to  the  inspiration  of 
the  moment  one  may  often  get  a  flashlight 
thrown  on  the  essentials  so  illuminating  that 
it  more  than  compensates  for  any  little  im- 
maturity in  the  details. 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      131 

Many  actors  need  to  be  taught  the  whole 
business  of  a  part.  They  learn  by  rote  to 
such  an  extent  that  when  they  are  cast  for 
anything  important  you  cannot  be  sure  of  the 
result  unless  you  have  the  luck  to  engage  also 
the  producer  who  can  give  them  the  coaching 
they  require. 

Duse  is  another  actress  whose  work  is 
spontaneous  to  a  degree,  and  in  the  old  days 
she  eschewed  make-up,  with  the  strange  re- 
sult that  she  looked  a  different  woman  ac- 
cording to  whether  you  saw  her  close  or  from 
afar.  I  saw  her  first  from  the  back  of  the 
dress  circle  and  thought  that  she  had  gray 
hair,  but  when  I  changed  my  place  to  the 
front  of  the  stalls  I  found  that  her  hair  was 
dark  with  a  curious  gray  lock  right  in  the 
front.  The  absence  of  make-up  was  sup- 
posed to  leave  her  features  a  better  canvas 
for  facial  expression;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact 
I  am  rather  doubtful  whether  this  was  ex- 
actly the  result  attained.  Again,  those  who 
were  very  close  had  an  advantage.  From  a 
distance  the  fact  that  none  of  the  features 
were  made  to  stand  out  by  the  use  of  cos- 
metics rendered  them  all  a  little  indistinct. 


132         Training  for  the  Stage 

For  sheer  facial  expression  on  the  stage,  as 
seen  in  the  glare  of  the  footlights,  I  think 
the  Pierrot's  mask  is  hard  to  beat,  for  the 
whitened  face  throws  up  the  reddened  mouth 
and  penciled  eyes  in  marked  relief,  and  those 
features,  of  course,  are  the  most  poignant 
where  facial  expression  is  concerned. 

It  was  Duse  who,  by  her  powerful  real- 
istic method,  opened  the  eyes  of  the  English 
to  the  fact  that  the  footlights  are  merely  a 
fourth  wall.  I  shall  never  forget  her  en- 
trance in  Magda.  When  Mrs.  Patrick 
Campbell  played  the  part  she  stood  posed 
in  the  doorway,  then  with  stately  mien  ad- 
vanced. But  one  was  hardly  aware  that  Duse 
was  on  the  stage  before  she  was  right  down 
by  the  footlights,  hugging  her  little  sister  in 
her  arms.  I  remember  she  played  quite  a 
long  portion  of  that  first  scene  sitting  in  a 
high-backed  chair  with  her  back  to  the  audi- 
ence, a  chair  that  practically  hid  her  from 
view. 

Her  methods  on  the  stage  are  so  spon- 
taneous that  you  feel  sure  they  are  due  to  in- 
stinct, and  not  to  that  studied  semblance  of 
the  unstudied,  with  which  some  members  of 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      133 

the  Manchester  School  have  made  us  fa- 
miliar. 

If  you  can  trust  your  cast,  spontaneity  is 
the  surest  guide;  but  the  "if"  is  menacing. 
Since  the  presentation  of  a  play  is  the  weld- 
ing together  of  the  work  of  many  human  be- 
ings, it  is  usually  fairer  to  have  a  guiding 
spirit  in  the  shape  of  a  good  producer.  That 
that  producer's  word  must  be  law  goes  with- 
out saying,  otherwise  discord  would  prevail. 
No  producer  is  worth  his  salt  if  his  methods 
are  hard  and  fast.  He  must  know  genius 
when  he  sees  it,  and  seeing  it,  must  trust  it. 
The  late  Sir  William  Gilbert  was  perhaps  the 
most  arbitrary  producer  ever  known.  He 
coached  and  drilled  his  company  to  the  small- 
est detail;  yet  when  he  felt  that  the  part  he 
had  created  was  in  good  hands  he  stood  aside 
and  let  the  genius  of  the  actor  have  its  way. 
There  is  a  story  told  of  the  late  W.  H.  Ken- 
dal.  Gilbert  had  been  particularly  worrying 
to  him  during  a  rehearsal,  and  at  last  Kendal 
ventured  on  a  remonstrance. 

"You  don't  keep  stopping  my  wife,"  he 
said  to  Gilbert. 


134         Training  for  the  Stage 

"Your  wife's  an  actor,"  was  the  emphatic 
reply. 

Many  actors  are  at  their  worst  at  re- 
hearsals; others  are  at  their  best.  Some  will 
rehearse  a  dramatic  scene  on  the  verge  of 
melodrama,  and  then,  when  facing  an  audi- 
ence, hit  just  the  right  note.  Others  will 
under-play  right  to  their -last  limit.  Some 
actors  give  a  wonderful  first  night  and  are 
never  so  good  again.  Others  need  about  a 
month  to  work  into  their  part.  Certain  ac- 
tors have  certain  peculiarities.  When  play- 
ing The  Gay  Lord  Quex,  Sir  John  Hare  had 
a  habit,  at  a  particular  line  in  the  big  scene 
with  Sophy  Fulgarney,  of  picking  up  a  book 
that  lay  on  the  table,  turning  it  in  his  hand 
and  putting  it  down  again.  This  action  had 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  play,  and 
the  book  was  merely  there  to  give  a  natural 
effect  to  the  table.  But  one  night  it  so  hap- 
pened that  Props  forgot  to  put  the  book  on 
the  table.  When  Sir  John  Hare  arrived  at 
that  line  there  was  no  book  for  him  to  pick 
up ;  his  memory  failed  him,  and  he  had  to  be 
prompted.  This  is  a  very  natural  thing  to 
happen,  when  actors  are  rehearsed,  as  they 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      135 

are  nowadays,  with  all  the  business  cut  and 
dried.  It  may  make  for  smoothness  when 
everything  goes  right;  but  if  any  little  thing 
goes  wrong,  it  is  obvious  that  this  over-care- 
ful preparation  must  lessen  the  actor's  power 
of  resource. 

Some  producers  greatly  prefer  an  actor  to 
wait  for  the  word  of  command  and  make  no 
attempt  whatever  to  create  a  part  himself. 
Welch  used  to  hate  this,  and  when  he  found 
that  any  of  his  company  expected  him  to  set- 
tle every  movement  for  them  his  language  be- 
came unprintable.  He  must  have  been  very 
worrying  to  his  company,  for  however  much 
he  might  read  a  play  before  he  started  pro- 
ducing it,  he  was  apt  to  get  fresh  inspiration 
at  every  fresh  rehearsal,  with  the  result  that 
the  business  was  continually  being  changed. 
All  very  well  for  him,  because  he  could  adapt 
himself  to  any  circumstances  and  nothing  put 
him  out;  but  an  ordeal  for  the  actor  whose 
wit  was  less  ready  and  whose  position  in  the 
profession  less  secure. 

Vezin  used  to  declaim  against  the  modern 
custom  of  supplying  members  of  the  cast 
merely  with  their  own  parts  and  a  few  words 


136         Training  for  the  Stage 

to  act  as  cues.  He  said  that  it  was  an  insult 
to  the  intelligence  of  an  actor  not  to  give  him 
a  chance  to  study  his  part  in  connection  with 
the  whole  play.  His  own  method  of  study 
was  peculiar.  He  never  deliberately  memor- 
ized his  own  lines.  He  simply  read  the  play 
through  and  through  and  through  until  he 
was  saturated  with  it  and  could  have  recited 
the  whole  thing  from  beginning  to  end.  His 
is  undoubtedly  the  ideal  method,  but  Vezin 
was  a  man  of  high  ideals,  who  lived  for  his 
art  and  took  it  for  granted  that  the  welfare 
of  the  whole  production  was  the  one  thing 
every  honorable  actor  would  consider. 

I  remember  being  greatly  amused  one  day 
when,  at  a  rehearsal  of  Othello  in  which  he 
was  playing  the  Moor,  his  Emilia  happened 
to  be  a  lady  who  had  recently  played  the  part 
with  a  well-known  actor-manager.  The  fun 
began  when  it  came  to  the  fifth  act. 

At  Emilia's  entrance  here  Vezin  stood 
quietly  down  R.  with  his  shoulder  turned  to 
the  audience,  facing  up  stage.  Emilia  came 
rushing  on  to  the  center  of  the  stage  and 
started  her  lines: 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      137 

"O,  my  good  lord,  yonder"  s  foul  murders 
done." 

"Am  I  to  stand  here?"  she  said. 
"Yes,"  said  Vezin. 
She  proceeded: 

"O,  the  more  angel  she, 
And  you  the  blacker  devil!" 

"Am  I  still  standing  here?"  said  she. 
"Yes,"  said  Vezin. 

"My  husband?  er — Do  I  remain  here?" 
"Yes,"  said  Vezin. 

"M y  husband  say  that  she  was  false? — er 
— Am  I  to  play  it  all  dead  center?" 

"Yes,"  said  Vezin,  "it  is  your  scene." 

Emilia's    mouth    opened.       Her    scene! 

With  Othello  on  the  stage!     Words  failed 

her.     But  that  was  Vezin's  point  of  view. 

He  would  no  more  have  stolen  the  position 


138         Training  for  the  Stage 

of  advantage  on  the  stage  which  he  felt  be- 
longed by  rights  to  another  actor  than  he 
would  have  forged  a  check.  It  was  simply 
not  his  idea  of  common  honesty. 

I  have  said  that  on  the  English  stage  we 
place  possibly  undue  weight  on  the  impor- 
tance of  detail,  a  fault  which  the  late  Sir 
Henry  Irving  is  supposed  to  have  fostered, 
but  which  was  developed  hot-foot  by  Sir  Her- 
bert Tree.  We  have  one  virtue,  however, 
for  which  I  think  we  received  too  little  credit 
— we  use  the  whole  of  our  stage,  and  we  use 
it  naturally.  This  is  one  reason  why  action 
is  all  important  in  our  plays  and  why  our 
plays  are  therefore  essentially  plays  where  a 
graceful,  natural  carriage  and  simple  but  ef- 
fective use  of  gesture  are  very  necessary.  In 
France  the  actors  show  themselves  much 
more  conscious  of  their  audiences.  They 
often  stand  in  line  and  face  the  audience. 
The  action  takes  place  to  the  front  of  the 
stage  and  is  subordinated  to  the  speaking  of 
the  words.  This  is  the  case,  again,  in  Amer- 
ica, where  the  producers  keep  the  actors  well 
down  stage,  seldom  setting  a  room  as  we  do, 
but  usually  having  a  center  arch  into  a  second 


Methods  of  Famous  Actors      139 

room  or  a  vista  down  a  garden  or  some  other 
device  which  will  fill  the  stage  and  give  a 
broad  effect  while  keeping  the  actual  room  in 
which  the  action  is  concentrated  narrowed 
down  to  the  front. 

Line  writing  is  highly  esteemed  in  Amer- 
ica, and  this  method  of  producing  enables  the 
actors  to  speak  their  lines  with  great  dis- 
tinctness. The  effect  is  not  so  restful  or  so 
absolutely  true  to  life  as  that  which  we 
achieve,  but  for  a  certain  style  of  play  it  is 
possibly  more  effective.  I  believe  myself  that 
one  of  the  reasons  why  American  plays  are 
not  always  such  successes  here  as  in  their  na- 
tive land  is  that  the  English  company  does 
not  adapt  itself  to  the  subtle  differences  of 
method  required  for  the  American  business. 

Holland  has  a  very  painstaking  theater, 
and  Germany,  when  handling  classics,  a  sense 
of  grandeur  which  often  becomes  stereo- 
typed. Norway  is  curiously  homely,  and  the 
monosyllabic  Norse  tongue  has  a  fascinating, 
childish  candor  of  its  own.  Spain  has  aban- 
don and  a  certain  rough  fire  which  at  times 
degenerates  into  the  frank  naivete  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  But  Italy,  to  my  mind,  holds 


140         Training  for  the  Stage 

the  palm.  Her  stage  has  the  innate  spon- 
taneity of  a  race  whose  very  life  is  drama. 
It  is  as  candid  as  the  Norwegian,  as  witty  as 
the  French,  as  classic  as  the  German,  as 
natural  as  the  English,  as  ingenious  as  the 
American,  and  has,  withal,  a  characteristic 
fire.  In  Italy  the  great  play  is  a  thing  of  com- 
paratively common  occurrence,  but,  then,  so 
is  the  great  actor.  Where  we  leave  off  they 
begin. 


CHAPTER  XI 

HOW  TO  SET  ABOUT  THE  WORK  OF  GETTING 
AN  ENGAGEMENT 

GET  to  know  people.  It  is  difficult  to  make 
one's  way  on  the  stage  unless  one  has  a 
friend  at  Court  to  help  one  on.  Beware  of 
advertisements.  Beware  of  all  agents  ex- 
cept the  few  who  are  guaranteed  by  those 
wise  in  the  profession.  Traps  for  the  un- 
wary are  manifold;  and  very  serious  may  be 
the  fate  of  the  tenderfoot  who  gets  into 
wrong  hands. 

A  good  amateur  dramatic  company  is  not 
only  a  useful  mode  of  training,  but  is  often 
a  very  straight  road  on  to  the  stage.  Es- 
pecially helpful  is  the  work  undertaken  by 
many  amateur  societies  of  providing  enter- 
tainments for  mission-halls  at  the  East  End 
of  London,  as  on  these  make-shift  stages  one 
is  denied  the  help  of  scenes  and  properties, 
and  has  to  make  believe.  Unforeseen  hitches 
will  occur,  and  it  brings  out  the  resources  of 
141 


142         Training  for  the  Stage 

a  young  amateur  to  have  to  grapple  with 
these  conditions. 

I  remember  once,  when  a  little  A.D.C. 
which  I  had  formed  among  my  pupils  was 
performing  at  an  East  End  Mission  Hall,  an 
amusing  incident  occurred.  We  were  play- 
ing Sydney  Grundy's  drama,  A  Fool's  Para- 
dise, and  I  was  taking  the  part  of  the  woman 
who  poisons  her  husband.  At  the  end  of  the 
play  I  get  caught  by  the  Doctor,  who  declares 
that  there  is  poison  in  the  draught  I  have 
poured  out  for  my  husband.  I  cry  out  "This 
is  not  poison — see!"  and  drink  the  draught 
myself;  then  with  a  laugh  of  defiance  make 
my  way  in  stately  fashion  to  die  discreetly 
"off,"  in  the  wings.  Well,  after  my  mock- 
ing curtsey  I  laid  my  hand  upon  the  door  only 
to  find,  to  my  horror,  that  somebody  had 
bolted  it  on  the  outside.  I  started  my  laugh 
all  over  again,  and  gravitated  to  the  door  R. 
To  my  dismay,  that  was  bolted  too;  so  with 
a  final  "ha!  ha!"  of  mockery  I  fled  across 
the  stage  and  as  a  last  resource  tried  the 
door  L.  That  also  was  bolted!  So  I  had  to 
go  through  my  death  agonies  in  front  of  the 
audience  and  die  C.  This  was  all  very  well; 


Getting  an  Engagement        143 

in  fact  I  rather  enjoyed  it.  But  unfortun- 
ately, my  husand  in  the  play  had  not  been 
listening,  and  when  he  now  made  his  en- 
trance, he  fell  over  my  feet  and  said  "Oh,  I 
beg  your  pardon!  What  are  you  doing 
there?"  and  the  scene  ended  to  yells  of  ap- 
preciative laughter  from  the  back  benches. 

We  often  had  much  to  put  up  with  at  these 
little  mission  halls,  and  our  audiences,  no 
doubt,  still  more!  But  that  we  got  a  great 
deal  of  useful  experience  is  proved  by  the 
fact  that  every  member  of  that  little  com- 
pany is  either  doing  well  on  the  stage — or  has 
made  a  good  marriage ! 

Of  course,  the  easiest  way  to  get  an  in- 
troduction to  the  stage  is  to  go  to  a  good 
teacher,  and  by  the  excellence  of  your  work 
inspire  that  teacher  with  the  firm  belief  that 
your  future  success  is  going  to  be  a  good 
advertisement  for  him.  He  will  then  see  to 
it  for  you.  Certain  agents,  of  course,  are 
thoroughly  worth  while  if  you  can  only  per- 
suade them  that  you  yourself  are  worth  while. 
That  is  the  trouble.  It  is  no  good  telling 
them  so.  They  are  all  quite  used  to  hearing 
that.  And  it  is  no  good  trying  to  give  them 


144         Training  for  the  Stage 

a  specimen  of  your  quality  in  the  shape  of  a 
recitation.  They  simply  won't  listen  to  you. 
The  days  when  a  manager  casting  a  play  al- 
lowed the  applicants  to  recite  to  him  are,  in 
the  memory  of  the  oldest  of  us,  as  a  golden 
dream.  Nowadays  a  cast  is  chosen  very 
largely  by  its  appearance,  and  some  authors 
are  even  greater  sinners  in  this  respect  than 
managers,  because  they  have  much  less  sense 
of  what  can  be  done  by  make-up.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  the  appeal  of  the  stage  is  so  es- 
sentially an  appeal  to  the  eye  that  appear- 
ance is  infinitely  more  important  than  the  or- 
dinary amateur  is  willing  to  admit.  If  a 
man  looks  the  part  he  is  playing  the  audi- 
ence is  willing  to  believe  that  the  whole  credit 
is  due  to  his  acting.  But  if  a  man  does  not 
look  that  part,  his  acting  has  got  to  be  super- 
lative indeed  to  enable  him  to  overcome  the 
impression  his  appearance  has  created. 

The  casting  of  a  play  is  such  a  vital  factor 
in  its  success  or  failure  that  a  manager  cannot 
be  blamed  for  being  afraid  to  trust  any  one 
whose  work  in  a  similar  part  he  has  not  ac- 
tually seen;  and  this  is  one  of  the  reasons 
why  an  actor  who  has  once  made  a  success 


Getting  an  Engagement        145 

in  a  marked  character  part  will  be  condemned 
for  the  rest  of  his  life  to  play  parts  of  that 
type ;  which  sometimes,  unfortunately,  means 
that  if  the  part  is  of  a  type  which  is  not  often 
found  in  plays,  he  will  be  denied  a  chance  to 
make  good  in  other  lines.  This  is  the  reason 
why  certain  notable  successes  have  brought  in 
their  train  years  of  inaction  to  the  genius 
which  has  created  them.  It  is  a  crying  evil, 
and  one  of  which  every  actor  stands  in  dread. 
Since  appearance  is  so  important  on  the 
stage,  it  is  obvious  that  the  actor  who  wishes 
to  get  on  must  bear  it  ever  in  mind;  and 
many  a  youngster  has  to  deny  himself  what 
he  would  far  rather  have  for  the  sake  of 
keeping  always  a  good  appearance.  Our 
wardrobe  is  the  specter  that  haunts  our  lives; 
and  when  trying  for  a  first  engagement  it  is 
advisable  that  the  details  of  dress  should  be 
carefully  chosen.  By  this  I  do  not  mean 
that  you  must  dress  extravagantly,  and  cer- 
tainly I  do  not  mean  that  you  must  dress  ex- 
aggeratedly. The  days  have  long  gone  by 
when  the  actress  who  turned  up  in  the  gay 
plumage  of  the  de.mi-monde  was  the  actress 
who  was  chosen.  In  the  West  End,  at  any 


146         Training  for  the  Stage 

rate,  it  is  the  tailor-made  girl  who  gets  the 
first  chance.  Her  clothes  must  not  only  be 
well  made,  they  must  be  tasteful  and  refined, 
and  she  must  wear  them  as  if  she  were  in  the 
habit  of  wearing  good  clothes,  and  as  if  she 
belonged  to  that  class  of  society  where  good 
clothes  are  so  much  a  matter  of  everyday 
life  that  we  have  ceased  to  be  conscious  of 
them.  Hats,  gloves  and  shoes  are  all  im- 
portant. A  manager  will  take  in  every  little 
detail  because  he  is  used  to  considering  the 
effect  of  detail  on  the  stage. 

It  is  always  a  mistake  to  apply  for  an  en- 
gagement when  there  is  nothing  definitely 
going.  Even  though  one  may  have  a  letter 
of  introduction  to  a  manager,  it  is  far  better 
to  keep  it  until  one  has  found  out  that  that 
manager  is  about  to  cast  a  play  either  for 
London  or  for  a  tour  and  has  certain  parts 
vacant.  In  this  case  try  to  find  out  what  these 
parts  are  and  the  type  of  appearance  that 
will  be  required  for  them,  and  choose  your 
dress  accordingly.  A  woman  has  a  special 
advantage  this  way,  as  by  the  height  of  her 
heels  and  hat  she  can  succeed  in  conveying 
an  impression  of  being  short  or  tall. 


Getting  an  Engagement        147 

Be  very  careful  how  you  make  up  when 
applying  for  an  engagement.  It  is  not  always 
necessary  to  make-up  at  all.  If  the  com- 
plexion is  fresh,  Nature  unaided  will  create 
the  best  impression.  But  when  make-up  is 
used,  let  it  be  discreetly  used,  bearing  in 
mind  the  fact  that  what  looks  well  on  the 
stage  will  look  outre  in  daylight.  So  let  the 
touching-up  be  done  with  discretion. 

We  will  suppose  that  the  initial  difficulty 
of  getting  information  that  a  cast  is  about 
to  be  chosen  has  been  overcome,  and  that  the 
aspirant  has  applied  for  an  appointment  and 
has  received  a  reply,  naming  the  hour  at 
which  he  or  she  is  to  call.  It  is  useless  to 
turn  up  without  an  appointment.  It  is  worse 
than  useless  to  besiege  a  manager  with  con- 
stant applications  for  appointments  which  he 
is  not  likely  to  grant;  as  if  he  once  forms  the 
impression  that  you  are  a  nuisance  he  will 
not  see  you  at  all. 

We  are  supposing,  however,  that  he  has 
consented  to  see  you,  and  that  you  have  re- 
ceived a  card  telling  you  to  call  at  the  theater 
at  such  and  such  an  hour.  You  turn  up  at  the 
stage  door  and  show  your  card  to  the  stage 


148         Training  for  the  Stage 

door-keeper.  Be  very  nice  to  the  stage  door- 
keeper; he  is  a  power  in  the  land.  Don't  try 
to  tip  him  at  the  wrong  moment,  and  don't, 
whatever  you  do,  let  him  see  that  you  are 
trying  to  be  nice.  Don't  condescend.  What- 
ever his  original  social  standing  may  have 
been,  he  is  by  now  at  least  your  equal,  and 
probably  very  much  your  superior,  in  that 
greatest  of  all  sciences — knowledge  of  human 
nature !  I  have  many  friends  who  are  stage 
door-keepers,  and  one  of  my  most  valued 
friends  is  a  stage  carpenter.  Never  have  I 
felt  prouder  in  my  life  then  when  the  prop- 
erty man  at  the  Ambassadors  Theater  on  the 
first  night  of  my  management  there  said: 
"May  I  shake  hands,  Miss  Platt?  I  have 
never  known  rehearsals  go  without  a  cross 
word  before!" 

Apropos  of  the  stage  carpenter,  Charlie 
by  name,  and  a  shrewd  North  countryman, 
it  was  once  brought  home  to  me  that  he  was 
really,  as  he  often  humorously  remarked,  one 
of  the  most  important  members  of  the  com- 
pany. He  happened  to  be  away  one  after- 
noon. On  that  occasion  none  of  the  doors 
worked;  the  stage  was  set  in  the  wrong  way; 


Getting  an  Engagement        149 

the  stage  cloth  rucked  up,  and  one  of  the  ac- 
tors tumbled.  Something  went  wrong  with 
the  property  piano,  and  at  the  end  of  the  per- 
formance the  star  was  in  such  a  temper  that 
I  had  my  eyes  opened  as  never  before  to  the 
wealth  of  the  English  language.  However 
good  a  cast,  however  perfect  the  manage- 
ment, it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  suc- 
cess of  the  play  can  stand  or  fall  by  the  head 
carpenter,  who,  moreover,  can  give  a  novice 
many  a  useful  tip  and  prove  indeed  a  friend 
in  need,  or  the  reverse,  as  the  case  may  be. 

There  is  a  story  told  of  Wybert  Rousby. 
When  playing  King  Lear  once  he  fell  foul  of 
the  stage  hands  and  abused  them  roundly  for 
not  making  the  thunder  loud  enough.  The 
next  night,  when  the  scene  on  the  heath  com- 
menced, he  was  more  furious  than  ever,  for 
there  was  no  thunder  at  all.  When,  however, 
he  opened  his  mouth  to  deliver  the  big  speech, 

"Blow,  winds,  and  crack  your  cheeks," 

he  found  that  there  was  no  occasion  to  com- 
plain of  lack  of  thunder!  The  audience  en- 
joyed that  performance  a  great  deal  more 


150         Training  for  the  Stage 

than  he  did,  but  not  quite  in  the  right  spirit. 

I  feel  as  if  I  were  wandering  from  my 
point,  but  really  I  am  not  doing  so,  for  what- 
ever other  advice,  good  or  bad,  this  little 
book  may  try  to  give,  it  should  at  least  con- 
tain these  words  of  wisdom:  "If  you  want 
to  get  on  on  the  stage,  be  nice  to  every  one." 

Now  I  have  quite  forgotten  where  I  left 
my  aspirant.  Waiting  at  the  stage  door,  I 
think.  Dear  me !  That  reminds  me  of  once, 
long  ago — no,  not  so  very  long  ago — when  I 
went  down  to  Wyndham's  to  see  James 
Welch.  In  the  stage  door-keeper's  hutch  sat 
a  fireman.  He  did  not  know  me  and  he  re- 
fused to  let  me  pass.  I  told  him  I  had  an 
appointment.  He  said: 

"Where's  your  letter?" 

I  had  not  got  a  letter,  so  he  snorted  and  re- 
sumed his  reading. 

After  five  minutes  I  said  again:  "I  really 
have  an  appointment." 

He  just  snorted  and  resumed  his  reading. 

"I  really  think  Mr.  Welch  must  be  waiting 
for  me." 

He  snorted  and  resumed  his  reading. 

After  another  five  minutes  I  tried  him  in 


Getting  an  Engagement        151 

another  language — two,  three,  four  other 
languages.  He  only  snorted  and  resumed 
his  reading. 

Then  a  small  boy  came  along. 

"Guv'nor  says  he  is  expecting  a  young  lady. 
Will  you  please  show  her  into  his  dressing- 
room  and  ask  her  to  wait?" 

The  fireman  snorted  and  resumed  his  read- 
ing. So  I  said: 

"If  you  please,  I  think  /  am  the  young 
lady." 

He  laid  down  his  paper  and  looked  me  up 
and  down. 

"Younff  lady!"  he  said,  "YOUNG 
LADY!!"  and  snorted  and  resumed  his 
reading. 

Until  Welch  himself  came  along  to  fetch 
me  I  had  to  remain  outside. 

However,  this  sort  of  thing  does  not  often 
happen,  and  it  wouldn't  have  happened  to  me 
then  if  I  had  had  the  sense  to  turn  up  in 
decent  clothes ;  but  as  it  was  a  filthy  day  and 
as  I  knew  Welch  well,  it  did  not  occur  to  me 
to  dress  for  the  guardian  of  the  portal. 

Well,  we  will  suppose  that  you  get  past  the 
stage  door-keeper  and  are  shown,  after  wait- 


152         Training  for  the  Stage 

ing  not  more  than  two  hours  and  thirty-five 
minutes,  into  the  manager's  room.  He  will 
probably  be  very  nice  to  you,  especially  if 
he  does  not  mean  to  engage  you.  Make  up 
your  mind  before  you  go  in  that  you  will  only 
be  allowed  to  speak  three  words,  and  that 
those  three  words  must  be  carefully  chosen. 
When  it  comes  to  the  point  you  are  sure  to 
forget  what  you  have  decided  to  say;  but 
provided  you  remember  that  you  mus*t  say 
as  little  as  possible  that  won't  matter.  Never 
forget  that  managers  are  very  busy  people, 
and  that  to  win  your  way  into  their  good 
books  you  must  be  an  adept  at  the  art  of 
tabloid  conversation.  Don't  tell  them  what 
other  people  think  of  you.  Directly  they 
look  at  you  they  will  know  what  they  think, 
and  that's  the  only  thing  that  matters  to 
them.  Don't  make  objections  to  anything 
they  say.  Don't  give  them  any  chance  to 
think  that  you  are  going  to  be  a  nuisance,  be- 
cause a  manager  never  tolerates  any  one 
whom  he  thinks  is  going  to  be  a  nuisance, 
and  he  has  a  little  habit  of  thinking  that  most 
people  are  going  to  be  a  nuisance.  Unfor- 
tunately, he  has  only  too  often  good  reason 


Getting  an  Engagement        153 

for  thinking  so.  Remember,  if  you  arc  nerv- 
ous, he  is  nervy.  Just  stay  quiet  and  let  him 
make  up  his  own  mind.  If  it  is  in  your  favor 
all  the  better  for  you;  if  it  is  not,  and  you 
waste  his  time  trying  to  argue  him  into  en- 
gaging you,  you  are  only  prejudicing  your 
chances  for  another  occasion.  Smile,  look 
willing  and  able  to  do  anything,  and  he  will 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  though,  of  course, 
you  are  no  good  at  all,  you  may  be  the  sort 
of  person  whom  he  can  successfully  knock 
into  shape,  and  if  he  thinks  that  he  will  like 
you,  for,  however  managers  may  differ  in 
other  ways,  I  have  never  known  one  who  did 
not  cherish  in  his  heart  the  belief  that  he 
could  coach  a  stone  to  act  if  he  only  liked  to 
try.  He  probably  could!  To  the  born 
teacher  there  is  nothing  in  this  world  so  en- 
joyable as  teaching,  and  the  quality  that  at- 
tracts us  all  is  malleability. 

Managers  are  not  running  philanthropic 
institutions,  and  the  one  thing  that  is  not 
likely  to  melt  their  hearts  is  a  long  history  of 
an  actor's  personal  troubles.  Success  on  the 
stage  is  a  question  of  magnetism,  and  when 
we  are  weighed  down  with  woe  we  are  not 


154         Training  for  the  Stage 

magnetic.  A  manager  wants  a  cast  which 
will  induce  an  audience  to  come  to  his  theater 
again  and  again,  and  he  knows  that  the  self- 
centered  nature  is  not  the  type  which  attracts. 
If  you  can  leave  on  him  the  impression  that 
you  are  interesting  he  may  give  you  a  chance ; 
but  it  is  the  reverse  of  probable  that  he  will 
find  anything  to  interest  him  in  a  narrative 
of  your  personal  affairs.  When  choosing  the 
cast  of  a  new  play  his  thoughts  are  all  en- 
grossed with  his  own  affairs,  and  he  instinc- 
tively resents  any  attempt  to  draw  him  away 
from  the  matter  in  hand.  Keep  quiet.  Let 
him  look  at  you  and  form  his  own  conclu- 
sions, and  only  answer  when  you  are 
spoken  to. 

Well,  now,  we  will  suppose  that  you  have 
followed  up  instructions  to  the  letter  and 
that  you  have  been  engaged.  You  will  be 
given  a  contract,  which  you  will  sign  after 
you  have  read  it.  It  ought  to  be  the  stan- 
dard contract  of  the  Actors'  Trade  Union, 
and  probably  will  be,  and  as  you  yourself  are 
about  to  become  a  member  of  the  Actors' 
Trade  Union  as  soon  as  eligible,  this,  of 
course,  will  be  quite  agreeable  to  you.  We 


Getting  an  Engagement        155 

will  suppose  that  you  are  engaged  to  under- 
study. You  will  be  given  a  typescript  of 
your  part,  which  you  will  probably  read 
through.  It  will  consist  of  your  own  lines 
with  just  a  word  or  two  of  the  previous  lines 
as  cue,  and  will  not  give  you  any  idea  of  the 
play.  You  will  have  to  wait  till  rehearsals 
commence  to  find  out  what  it  is  all  about. 
This  does  not  matter,  for  it  is  never  advis- 
able to  study  a  part  until  after  the  first  re- 
hearsal as,  if  you  have  formed  pre-conceived 
ideas  of  how  that  part  should  be  played,  it  is 
sometimes  difficult  to  throw  these  ideas  aside 
and  adapt  yourself  to  the  ideas  of  the  pro- 
ducer. Never  try  to  commit  a  line  to  heart 
until  you  have  been  told  your  position  on  the 
stage  when  that  line  is  spoken,  so  that  the 
business  of  the  stage  may  be  impressed  upon 
your  mind  in  connection  with  the  line  when 
the  line  is  studied.  Always  carry  a  pencil  to  re- 
hearsal, as  the  play  will  be  altered  during  the 
rehearsal,  and  every  alteration  must  be  care- 
fully entered  in  the  typescript,  together  with 
notes  of  the  positions  and  business.  Exacti- 
tude in  these  matters  is  important.  A  pro- 
ducer will  sometimes  change  his  mind  and  at 


156          Training  for  the  Stage 

one  rehearsal  will  alter  a  position  which  has 
been  settled  at  some  previous  rehearsal.  This 
cannot  be  helped,  as  it  is  very  difficult  to 
judge  of  the  exact  value  of  a  line  until  the 
play  is  beginning  to  shape,  and  often  little 
alterations  are  necessary  to  keep  the  balance 
true.  It  is  a  mistake  to  grumble,  as  some- 
times the  most  important  improvements  have 
been  made  in  a  play  at  the  last  minute,  and 
everything  that  is  for  the  good  of  the  play  is 
for  the  good  of  every  one  connected  with  that 
play.  Never  forget  what  has  been  so  often 
insisted  upon  in  these  pages,  namely,  that 
your  own  success  depends  entirely  on  that  of 
the  whole  production. 

Certain  actors  have  a  habit  of  grumbling 
in  the  wings  during  the  progress  of  rehearsal, 
of  commenting  on  the  work  of  the  producer 
and  suggesting  what  they  think  would  be 
improvements.  This  whispering  is  very  an- 
noying to  the  producer,  and  a  spirit  of  grum- 
bling once  set  going  in  a  cast  may  cause  an 
infinitude  of  mischief.  Don't  listen  to  these 
people.  If  you  are  new  to  the  profession 
they  will  try  to  get  hold  of  you,  as  they  are 
usually  vain,  and  they  will  think  that  you, 


Getting  an  Engagement        157 

being  a  novice,  will  be  easy  to  impress.  Be- 
ware of  them.  However  intent  on  his  work  a 
producer  may  seem  he  has  eyes  at  the  back 
of  his  head  and  ears  in  every  nerve  of  his 
body;  and  though  you  may  be  standing  right 
away  in  a  corner,  he  will  know  what  you  are 
doing  and  make  a  black  mark  in  his  mind 
against  you.  Always  wa<tch  a  rehearsal 
quietly  and  attentively.  If  other  members 
of  the  cast  speak  to  you,  be  polite,  but  do 
not  encourage  conversation.  If  you  do  you 
will  lose  the  adv-an-tage  of  the  finest  training 
you  can  ha^ve — that  of  watching  the  shaping 
of  a  play  and  the  co-aching  of  a  company. 

One  of  my  pupils,  Miss  Gladys  Parnell, 
got  a  remarkable  chance,  simply  because  of 
her  attention  at  rehearsals.  She  had  had  no 
experien-ce,  but  I  asked  Arthur  Bourchier  to 
give  her  a  chance,  and  he  very  kindly  offered 
her  a  " walk-on"  and  the  undeustudy  of  a 
small  part  in  The  Morals  of  Mavcus,  which 
was  going  on  at  the  Garrick.  Miss  Parnell 
was  so  attentive  at  rehearsals  that  she  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  the  stage  manager, 
Sydney  Valentine,  and  when  the  first  tour 
was  sent  out  he  asked  her  if  she  would  like 


158         Training  for  the  Stage 

to  go  with  it,  to  play  the  small  part  she  had 
understudied  in  town  and  understudy  the 
leading  lady  in  the  part  of  Carlatta.  She  ac- 
cepted, and  it  so  happened  that  the  actress 
playing  Carlotta  was  wanted  for  a  leading 
part  in  town  before  the  tour  finished,  and 
Miss  Parnell,  who  was  then  oaly  sixteen  and 
who  had  never  been  on  any  stage  before,  was 
given  Carlotta  to  play  for  the  rest  of  the 
tour.  She  was,  therefore,  playing  a  leading 
part  on  tour  before  she  had  been  on  the  stage 
three  months,  simply  because  she  showed  by 
her  quiet  attention  at  rehearsals  that  she  was 
really  earnest  about  her  work. 

I  can  tell  you  another  story  which  is  really 
rather  funny.  I  wrote  to  James  Welch  about 
another  pupil  of  mine — also  a  novice.  I 
asked  if  he  would  give  her  the  part  of  Ro- 
wena  in  When  Knights  were  Bold  on  tour. 
Of  course  he  replied  tha*t  he  would  see  her 
with  pleasure.  She  went  to  the  theater,  ac- 
companied by  her  mother,  a  dainty  lady  of 
aristocratic  bearing  and  exquisite  snow-white 
hair.  It  so  happened  that  the  girl  stopped 
in  the  passage  to  pick  up  a  glove  she  had 
dropped,  and  her  mother  entered  Welch's 


Getting  an  Engagement        159 

room  alone.  He  looked  a  little  surprised,  but 
he  said:  "I  hear  I  am  to  give  you  the  part 
of  Rowena.  Here  it  is.  Of  course,  anyone 
Miss  Platt  sends.  .  .  ."  The  girl  came  in 
a  moment  later  and  explained.  Jimmy  told 
me  afterwards  that  his  relief  was  boundless ! 


CHAPTER  XII 

.    .    .   AND  HOW  TO  BEHAVE  WHEN  IT  IS  GOT! 

IT  is  not  only  your  work  upon  the  stage 
which  helps  you  to  get  on  in  the  profession. 
To  an  actor  the  art  of  living  is  every  bit  as 
important  as  the  art  of  acting.  As  a  rule 
actors  talk  too  much ;  our  hours  of  work  are 
so  different  from  the  hours  of  the  ordinary 
citizen  that  we  are  apt  to  find  ourselves  in 
our  free  moments  thrown  almost  entirely  on 
our  fellow  professionals  for  company.  More- 
over, our  work  itself  gives  many  opportuni- 
ties for  gossip  because  it  is  composed  so  large- 
ly of  intervals  and  waits.  Then,  when  we 
tour,  there  are  train  journeys,  and  one  cannot 
be  thrown  with  a  certain  set  of  people  for 
weeks  or  months  at  a  time  without  becoming 
somewhat  intimate  with  them,  especially  if 
one  has  to  share  a  dressing-room.  *  All  these 
things  bring  about  a  number  of  rapid  and 
often  transitory  friendships,  similar  to  the  in- 
timacy, so  quickly  ended,  of  nurse  and  patient. 
160 


How  to  Behave  161 

Just  as  illness  makes  us  ready  to  open  our 
hearts,  so  the  nervous  tension  of  rehearsals 
and  the  close  quarters  of  life  at  a  theater — to 
say  nothing  of  the  exhilaration  produced  by 
the  actual  performances — tend  to  rouse  in  us 
a  somewhat  abnormal  mood,  in  which  discre- 
tion is  often  conspicuous  by  its  absence. 
Though  the  old  social  ban  upon  our  profes- 
sion has  been  very  greatly  removed,  we  are 
still  a  race  apart,  and  we  have  a  little  habit  of 
absorbing  ourselves  so  much  in  our  work  that 
we  are  apt  at  times  to  be  dull  company  for 
those  who  are  not  in  the  profession.  We  talk 
a  language  of  our  own,  and  as  we  are  haunted 
by  the  need  of  getting  fresh  and  fresh  en- 
gagements, we  cannot  keep  the  thought  of 
"shop"  out  of  our  minds.  We  pick  up  every 
little  bit  of  gossip  about  the  stage  because 
our  chances  may  depend  on  having  all  inside 
knowledge.  All  this  is  a  sufficient  incentive 
to  gossip,  accentuated  by  the  fact  that  as  we 
are  continually  seeking  fresh  engagements, 
we  are  always  waiting  about  to  see  managers ; 
and  while  we  wait  we  talk.  While  we  wait 
for  our  scenes  to  come  on  at  rehearsal  we 
are  only  too  apt  to  talk,  and  when  we  leave 


162         Training  for  the  Stage 

rehearsal  we  usually  wend  our  way  to  some 
professional  club  where  we  talk  again.  In 
fact  we  talk  a  great  deal  too  much,  and  one 
of  the  most  important  rules  of  conduct  for 
the  novice  entering  the  profession  is  to  learn 
to  control  his  tongue.  Remember  that  what- 
ever you  say  will  be  repeated,  and  that  when- 
ever it  is  repeated  it  will  be  exaggerated,  and 
your  name  will  be  attached  to  it  every  time, 
so  that  you  may  some  day  have  to  answer, 
not  only  for  what  you  have  said  but  for  what 
some  one  has  said  that  some  one  has  said  you 
have  said.  Yet  it  does  not  do  to  seem  un- 
communicative. For  an  actor  to  get  a  repu- 
tation of  being  stand-offish  is  fatal;  and  we 
owe  so  much  to  the  goodwill  of  our  fellow 
professionals  that  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  such  behavior  would  be  ungrateful.  You 
must  be  cordial  and  sincere ;  you  must  feel  a 
genuine  interest  in  your  companions,  and  you 
must  respond  to  their  interest  in  yourself. 
Talk  therefore,  and  talk  sincerely,  and  talk 
frankly;  but  never  give  your  inner  heart 
away,  and,  above  all,  never  give  information 
about  another  which  that  other  would  not  wish 
you  to  give.  There !  I  am  afraid  that  sounds 


Haw  to  Behave  163 

rather  preachy,  but  all  who  are  old  in  the 
profession  will  agree  with  me  that  it  is  good 
advice,  and  it  is  much  easier  said  than  done. 
I  have  said — Be  frank,  and  be  grateful  for 
the  interest  that  others  take  in  you.  But  I 
am  afraid  I  must  be  very  cynical  and  add — 
don't  believe  all  they  say!  I  remember  the 
case  of  a  little  friend  of  mine  whto  had  been 
understudying  and  was  suddenly  called  upon 
to  play  a  par-t  at  a  moment's  notice.  She  was 
somewhat  new  to  the  stage  and  nervous. 
She  had  hardly  entered  the  theater  when  one 
of  the  other  girls  in  the  company  descended 
on  her  with  a  hearty  invitation  to  share  a 
bottle  of  champagne.  "You  will  need  it,  my 
dear.  It  will  steady  your  nerves."  A  few 
minutes  after,  when  she  was  wandering  from 
her  friend's  dressing-room  to  her  own,  she 
was  again  stopped  and  a  glass  of  port  wine 
was  held  out  to  her.  Next  she  was  given 
balf  a  bottle  of  stout,  and  she  was  then  of- 
fered a  whisky  and  soda,  while  her  dresser 
insisted  on  her  taking  Wincarnis.  The  re- 
sult was  that  her  performance  made  up  in 
audacity  for  what  it  lacked  in  coherence. 
And  her  make-up !  The  other  girls  had  given 


164         Training  for  the  Stage 

her  advice  about  it  and  she  had  taken  it  all ! 
Her  face  looked  like  a  rainbow  seen  through 
a  spotted  veil. 

If  you  have  a  particularly  telling  bit  of 
business,  ten  to  one  somebody  will  say,  "I 
shouldn't  do  that,  my  dear."  If  you  are  a 
pretty  girl  you  are  sure  to  be  told  that  your 
make-up  is  unbecoming.  On  the  other  hand, 
when  you  have  steered  your  way  through 
these  pitfalls  and  have  got  upon  the  stage, 
you-  will  find  that,  understudy  though  you  be, 
the  principals  of  the  company  will  do  all  in 
their  power  to  assist  you.  They  will  whis- 
per your  lines ;  they  will  cover  your  mistakes ; 
they  will  hearten  you  with  words  of  encour- 
agement; and  when  the  ordeal  is  over,  they 
will  give  you  their  cordial  congratulations. 
More  than  this,  if  they  can  put  in  a  good 
word  for  you  with  that  management  or  any 
other  they  will  do  so  con  amore* 

Success  on  the  stage  depends  much  on  per- 
sonality; and  experience  goes  to  show  that 
success  comes  more  surely  to  those  who  are 
not  always  trying  to  snatch  it.  Go  quietly 
about  your  work  and  never  commit  a  breach 
of  etiquette,  for  though  we  are  considered 


How  to  Behave  165 

Bohemians,  we  have  our  rules  of  caste,  which 
must  be  stringently  observed.  Don't  force 
yourself  on  the  attention  of  an  actor  of 
higher  standing  than  your  own.  Wait.  If 
there  is  anything  in  you  worth  noticing  he 
will  notice  it  for  himself  and  seek  you  out 
without  your  having  to  seek  him.  I  have  seen 
a  manager  brush  aside  a  crowd  of  clamorous 
girls  as  if  they  were  flies,  and  pick  out  the 
one  who  stayed  quietly  by  saying  nothing.  I 
have  seen  a  leading  lady  smile  sweetly  every 
night  for  a  week  in  answer  to  the  voluble 
greeting  of  an  understudy  who  accompanied 
her  to  the  door  of  her  dressing-room  paying 
her  compliments  and  pressing  attentions  on 
her.  But  at  the  end  of  the  week  the  star 
said  to  her  dresser:  "Keep  that  girl  out  of 
my  way."  Don't  intrude  where  you  are  not 
wanted.  It  is  a  mistake. 

Of  course  the  social  side  of  life  is  im- 
portant to  us,  because  if  we  have  many 
friends  we  bring  a  certain  following  to  see 
us  when  we  are  playing,  and  this  is  a  clear 
asset.  Many  a  play  is  put  on  the  stage  with 
insufficient  financial  backing,  and  if  this  play 
is  not  an  immediate  success  its  fate  may  de- 


166         Training  for  the  Stage 

pend  upon  the  nucleus  of  an  audience  brought 
by  the  social  connection  of  its  cast.  If  it  can 
steer  through  its  first  weeks  without  financial 
disaster  it  may  develop  into  a  success;  but 
those  first  weeks  are  a  ticklish  time  for  almost 
every  play,  and  it  is  often  useful  to  have  a 
little  private  interest  which  will  help  to  fill 
the  house  during  that  period.  An  actor  can- 
not afford  to  live  too  retired  a  life.  He  must 
achieve  a  certain  measure  of  popularity  both 
on  and  off  the  stage,  and  for  this  purpose  it 
is  well  that  he  should  belong  to  certain  use- 
ful and  influential  clubs.  He  must  also  know 
how  to  behave  in  any  class  of  society,  and  to 
do  this  it  is  as  well  that  he  should  acquire 
the  habits  of  society,  and  especially  an  ac- 
quaintance with  its  latest  fads  and  shibbo- 
leths. On  the  other  hand,  excess  of  all  kinds 
is  greatly  to  be  deplored,  because,  apart  from 
any  moral  reason,  he  will  soon  find  that  that 
sort  of  thing  blunts  his  more  delicate  percep- 
tions and  renders  him  insensitive  to  those  fine 
touches  and  subtle  distinctions  on  which  the 
artistic  value  of  his  work  depends. 

Of  course  it  is  essential  for  an  actor  to 
look  after  his  health,  because  his  work  is  of 


How  to  Behave  167 

a  kind  which  tells  upon  the  nerves.  It  is  as 
important  to  observe  sound  laws  of  hygiene 
with  reference  to  your  daily  life,  as  it  is  to 
keep  control  of  your  nerves  with  reference 
to  the  work  itself.  Argument  is  apt  to  run 
high  with  regard  to  how  far  you  should  let 
yourself  go  when  playing  a  dramatic  scene. 
One  school  will  say  that  an  artist  must  always 
"feel"  what  he  is  doing,  and  another  will 
maintain  that  the  best  work  is  done  by  the 
man  who,  though  realizing  the  emotional 
value  of  the  scene  he  is  playing,  never  aban- 
dons himself  to  that  emotion,  but  simply  sim- 
ulates it.  It  seems  to  me  that  either  extreme 
would  be  equally  inartistic.  An  actor  who 
believes  that  by  lashing  himself  into  a  state 
of  hysteria  he  can  achieve  a  great  emotional 
effect  is  only  too  apt  to  take  the  leap  from 
the  sublime  to  the  ridiculous,  and  by  losing 
control  of  himself  lose  also  his  power  of  con- 
veying to  others  what  he  wishes  to  express. 
James  Welch,  one  of  the  greatest  tragic  ac- 
tors I  have  even  seen,  when  rehearsing  for 
"The  Hooligan"  or  any  other  emotional  part, 
would  come  along  to  my  rooms  and  go  over 
the  lines  until  he  had  got  so  accustomed  to 


168         Training  for  the  Stage 

them  by  constant  repetition  that  he  could 
speak  them  without  having  his  utterance  im- 
peded by  sobs.  I  have  known  him,  when  first 
reading  aloud  scenes  of  a  pathetic  nature, 
stop  with  the  tears  running  down  his  cheeks, 
quite  unable  to  continue  speaking.  His  own 
feeling  was  so  great  that  it  defeated  its  pur- 
pose. He  had  to  conquer  this,  but  he  re- 
membered it,  and  when  he  had  learnt  to  con- 
trol it,  his  memory  of  it  enabled  him  to  re- 
produce the  effect  of  feeling.  Of  course  the 
intensity  of  our  feeling  on  the  stage  varies 
very  much  with  our  temperament,  but  I  do 
not  think  it  follows  that  an  actor  need  be 
wrung  to  the  heartstrings  by  the  scene  he  is 
playing  so  long  as  he  has  realized  its  full 
emotional  value  when  first  studying  the  part. 
His  control  of  the  technique  of  his  art  will 
enable  him  to  reproduce  sufficient  actual  emo- 
tion to  ensure  a  result  that  is  artistic  and  sin- 
cere. It  is  often  those  who  talk  the  most 
who  feel  the  least,  and  I  am  not  inclined  to 
think  that  hysteria  can  ever  take  the  place  of 
emotion.  One  seldom  sees  deep  feeling  sin- 
cerely conveyed  upon  the  stage,  because  it  is 
only  great  natures  who  understand  it,  and 


How  to  Behave  169 

great  natures  are  rare.  When  an  artist  like 
Duse  lifts  her  head  and  looks  the  anguish  of 
a  broken  heart,  we  don't  need  sobs  and  pants 
and  gasps  and  cries.  Her  eyes  alone  convey 
something  beyond  words. 

Macready  was  presumably  a  great  actor, 
but  it  is  not  necessary  to  adopt  his  method 
of  marching  up  and  down,  up  and  down,  in 
the  wings  like  a  caged  lion,  working  himself 
up  into  a  state  of  nervous  excitement  before 
he  burst  upon  the  stage.  That  sort  of  thing 
is  gone.  If  the  power  of  a  scene  is  not  suf- 
ficient to  awaken  in  you  the  right  mood  di- 
rectly you  enter  upon  it,  you  are  no  actor. 
But,  of  course,  you  must  dedicate  yourself  to 
great  work  by  avoiding  any  foolish  waste  of 
nervous  energy. 

It  is  a  mistake  for  an  actor  to  fuss  about 
his  work  or  think  it  necessary  to  stimulate  his 
nerves  unnaturally.  Nervousness  seems  a 
necessary  adjunct  of  artistic  ability,  and,  for 
my  part,  I  think  it  a  pleasing  one.  My  heart 
goes  out  to  the  nervous  temperament,  es- 
pecially when  it  is  accompanied  by  real  power. 
I  remember  driving  to  Covent  Garden  with 
Miss  Perceval  Allen  when  she  was  singing 


170         Training  for  the  Stage 

Brunhilde  in  The  Ring.  As  we  drew  near 
the  theater  and  saw  the  queues  waiting  she 
clutched  my  hand  and  said:  "Are  all  those 
people  waiting  to  hear  me  sing,  dear?"  in 
the  tone  of  a  frightened  child.  It  is  the  right 
spirit,  and,  whether  acknowledged  or  not,  I 
think  it  is  the  spirit  in  which  every  artist  faces 
his  work.  But  to  assume  the  pose  of  nerves, 
to  call  "temperament"  an  excuse  for  irrita- 
bility, erratic  behavior  and  self-indulgence,  is 
simply  to  cut  the  throat  of  one's  own  genius. 
Be  yourself;  don't  talk  about  yourself. 
Don't  try  to  impress  other  people  with  the 
fact  that  you  are  something  apart  from  the 
common  herd,  because  if  you  do,  they  will 
simply  dislike  you  for  it,  and  when  they  get 
a  chance  of  finding  fault  with  you,  they  will 
make  the  most  of  it. 

I  remember  hearing  a  pretty  story.  At  a 
well-known  theatrical  agent's  in  New  York 
there  were  a  crowd  of  actresses  assembled, 
talking,  posing,  giving  themselves  airs,  re- 
counting their  triumphs,  hinting  at  their  ad- 
mirers. The  door  of  the  inner  room  opened, 
and  the  greatest  of  American  managers  ap- 
peared there.  Every  one  stopped  chatter- 


How  to  Behave  171 

ing  and  pushed  forward,  eager  to  attract  his 
eye.  Taking  no  notice  of  the  finely  dressed 
poseuses,  he  beckoned  with  his  finger  to  a 
quiet  little  woman  who  had  been  sitting  silent 
in  the  corner.  She  rose  and  went  into  his 
private  room.  She  was  Clara  Morris,  and 
a  few  weeks  later  all  New  York  rang  with 
her  name.  She  became  the  greatest  actress 
America  has  ever  had,  and  I  believe  she  owed 
her  first  chance  largely  to  the  fact  that  she 
made  no  attempt  to  assert  herself,  having 
so  real  a  personality  of  her  own  that  its  quiet 
power  made  itself  felt  without  the  need  for 
any  assertion.  If  quietness  be  backed  by 
power  it  is  the  most  telling  quality  an  actor 
can  possess.  Critics  call  it  restraint. 

But  the  power  must  be  innate.  Young  ac- 
tors sometimes  shrink  from  anything  effective 
on  the  stage  from  the  fear  that  it  may  be 
melodramatic.  The  gist  of  the  whole  matter 
lies  in  this:  that  if  you  have  to  assume  an 
emotion  and  lash  yourself  into  an  effect,  that 
effect  is  bound  to  seem  melodramatic  be- 
cause it  is  forced;  but  if  you  have  a  tempera- 
ment which  is  capable  of  deep  feeling  you 
can  express  it  without  conscious  effort,  be- 


172         Training  for  the  Stage 

cause  your  face  and  eyes  will  express  it  for 
you.  Husband  your  resources.  Don't  strike 
the  top  note  too  soon,  or  you  get  no  climax. 
The  greater  your  control  over  your  own 
nerve,  the  greater  is  the  suggestion  of  real 
feeling.  Nerves  and  feeling  are  not  only  two 
different  things;  they  are  diametrically  op- 
posed to  one  another.  The  man  who  is 
nerve-ridden  sees  everything  with  a  twist.  A 
steady  judgment  is  essential  in  any  art,  but  it 
is  peculiarly  so  on  the  stage,  where  indi- 
vidual effort  can  have  no  real  value  unless 
sustained  by  the  balance  and  proportion  of 
the  whole.  Of  all  artists  the  actor  is  the  last 
who  can  afford  to  waste  his  self-control. 

Still  less  can  he  afford  to  run  the  risk  of 
getting  a  "swelled  head."  On  the  contrary, 
he  must  always  be  his  own  most  drastic  and 
unbiased  critic.  Talent  is,  after  all,  a  small 
thing.  So  many  of  us  have  talent  nowadays,- 
and  yet  so  few  of  us  do  anything  worth  doing. 
We  are  apt  to  cry  out  that  this  is  because 
the  world  is  hard  on  us;  that  we  have  not 
had  a  fair  opportunity,  and  so  on,  and  so  on. 
Any  excuse  will  serve  so  that  we  do  not  blame 
ourselves.  I  am  not  saying  that  there  are  no 


How  to  Behave  173 

cases  in  the  world  which  such  excuses  fit 
justly  enough ;  but  I  do  honestly  believe  that 
as  a  rule  the  explanation  must  be  sought  not 
in  our  circumstances  but  in  ourselves.  It  is 
not  enough  to  have  talent;  we  must  have  per- 
severance, energy  and  grit.  Whatever  suc- 
cess we  achieve  it  must  seem  little  to  us  be- 
cause in  our  own  minds  we  must  always  be 
comparing  our  work  with  our  ideal. 

I  want  to  close  this  book  with  a  story  which 
I  heard  long  ago  and  have  never  forgotten, 
and  I  hope  never  shall  forget.  It  is  told  of 
Talma,  the  great  French  actor  of  the  time  of 
the  Revolution.  One  night,  when  he  had 
been  playing  one  of  his  famous  parts,  some 
friends  who  came  behind  to  see  him  after- 
wards said  to  him: 

"You  were  greater  than  ever  to-night." 

"Oh  no,"  he  said,  "I  am  not  satisfied.  I 
don't  do  what  I  want  to  do  with  that  last  act. 
Come  and  see  me  to-morrow.  I  will  try  to 
be  better  to-morrow." 

And  on  the  morrow  he  was  dead. 

I  can  think  of  no  better  prayer  to  carry  in 
your  heart  all  your  life  long  than  that  your 
work  may  be  better  every  day  I 


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